Climate Policies: Standing in the Shadows of a 6 to 3 Supreme Court

Long after Trump is a footnote in history, his impact on the environment will still be felt. For progressives and moderates alike, the horrors of a Trump presidency are cloaked in judicial robes.

Trump, in consort with the Senate Republicans, will have appointed nearly one in four federal judges and most probably three of nine justices on the US Supreme Court by the end of his first term.

Should Amy Coney Barrett be confirmed to fill the seat left vacant by the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the US Supreme Court will take on a decidedly conservative bent. With her confirmation, federal courts will be-come a vastly different venue in which to debate environmental regulation.

Unlike Justice Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett appears never to have decided nor written about any environmental law cases. Therefore, how she would rule on climate-related matters as a Supreme Court justice must be inferred from her various legal writings and lectures.

Coney Barret, like Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, is an originalist and textualist in the mold of Justice Antonin Scalia — for whom she clerked. As a textualist, she will rely almost exclusively on the literal or plain meaning of words. Textualists choose not to read into laws things that are not there and do not…