How the Supreme Court Defines Liberty

Recent memoirs by the Justices reveal how a new vision of restraint has led to radical outcomes. To understand how grudging Amy Coney Barrett's new book is when it comes to revealing personal details, consider that one of the family members the Supreme Court Justice most often refers to is a great-grandmother who died five years before she was born. On Barrett's desk at home, she recounts in " Listening to the Law," she keeps a photograph of her great-grandmother's one-story house, where, as a widow during the Great Depression, she raised some of her thirteen children and took in other needy relatives. "Looking at the photo reminds me of a woman who stretched herself beyond all reasonable capacity," Barrett explains. "I'm not sure that I'll be able to manage my life with the same grace that she had. But she motivates me to keep trying." For Barrett, the mother of seven children, that effort entails setting her alarm for 5 "Our kids get up at six thirty during the school year, so I start early if I want to accomplish anything on my own to-do list," she writes. This is what passes for disclosure from Barrett; she measures out the details of her life with coffee spoons, careful not to spill.