The new Handmaid Supreme Court Justice and "the autocracy trainee program"

Dahlia Litwick describes how the Republicans' capture of the federal judiciary with highly partisan, rightwing ideological, often techically unqualified judges is a major plank in the Republican Party's oligarchical plan for minority rule (my characterization, not hers): This Is What It Feels Like to Live Under Minority Rule Slate 10/26/2020.

She has a good take on the now-common tactic of judicial nominees to refuse to answer questions about almost anything substantive during confirmation hearings, which The Handmaid Amy Coney Barrett practiced rigidly:

The refusal to answer even the simplest yes/no questions about what black letter law means, and who it binds, has the effect - intentional or not - of unsettling what was once widely accepted and understood. It’s the judicial equivalent of “flooding the zone with shit“ and the result is the same when it’s done in law as it is when it’s done in media - it renders all that was known to be certain as indeterminate and up for grabs. It puts us all at the mercy of powerful deciders and consolidates the power to decide those newly open questions in an authority figure. It recalibrates both truth and power as emanating from someone else. [my emphasis]

Lithwick notes that for all the mealy-mouthed talk about the bogus "originalist" theory, Coney Barrett's position comes down to, "she has taken the position that what judges believe matters more than precedent anyhow."

She places the legal part of this project in the larger political goals of today's Republican Party.

Even though she didn’t answer any of her questions, we know who Barrett is and what she will do on the court. She is exactly who she has always been, who she was seated to become, and if you are worried for your children, for the planet, for the future of anti-racism and LGBTQ rights and voting rights, your worry is not misplaced. Barring court reform, the coming years will be marked by attacks on government agencies, court-endorsed rollbacks of progressive gains, and a steady series of wins for business, oligarchs, and inequality. It will come dressed as neutral “originalism,” but it will be neither neutral nor originalist. And as Adam Serwer brilliantly details, this is not simply a conservative project; it is a project to beat back changing demographics and to suppress the power of the majority. The whatever [attitude] that powerlessness engenders is a feature, not a bug, of the conservative legal movement’s efforts to tell majorities that they are of no moment. [my emphasis]

Here's another of her characterizations of this larger project: "Your very powerlessness is the point. The cruelty is the fringe benefit. ... You’re now in the autocracy trainee program."