Listening to the Law review – Amy Coney Barrett offers little comfort about state of US law

Conservative US supreme court justice’s memoir affirms that she is first and foremost a Trump appointee

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n June 2024, a divided US supreme court handed Donald Trump a get-out-of-jail-free card. Across 43 pages, chief justice John Roberts demolished the long-held belief that a president is not above the law. For Trump, who once bragged that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it, Christmas had come early.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, joined the majority but voiced doubt all the same.

“Congress has concurrent authority over many Government functions,” she wrote, “and it may sometimes use that authority to regulate the President’s official conduct, including by criminal statute. Article II” – the constitutional provision concerning presidential power – “poses no barrier to prosecution in such cases.”.