When Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were added to the Supreme Court shortlist, their judicial records were on full display. Justice Barrett was just the opposite. She had zero judicial record when she was added to the third iteration of President Trump's list. None at all. Indeed, she had been confirmed to the Seventh Circuit only seventeen days before the list was released! Moreover, when Judge Barrett was nominated to the Supreme Court, she had only a handful of high-profile cases. Her submissions to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017 and 2020 reveal her paper-thin record. Barrett lacked many of the indicia used to select other members on the list.
It is often said that the Federalist Society selected President Trump's nominees. If that were the case, they could have started with someone who was actually a longstanding member of the organization. But, Barrett was not a member of the Federalist Society while in law school, while clerking, or when she entered the academy. Even while living in the District of Columbia, she never attended the Federalist Society's national lawyers convention–a pilgrimage for conservative lawyers. She was a member in 2005-06, then let her membership lapse for nearly a decade. In 2017, Barrett was asked why she left the Society in 2006. She replied, "I do not recall why I left the Federalist Society in 2006." The dues for faculty are only $25 per year. She must have not found the organization useful–at least at that point in her career. By contrast, she held positions of leadership in the American Association of Law Schools. The Federalist Society hosted a faculty conference at the same time as the AALS convention, usually in a hotel across the street. I do not recall ever seeing Barrett at any of those meetings.
Barrett rejoined the Federalist Society towards the end of the Obama administration in 2014. That year, she had her first speaking engagement at a Federalist Society event. However, after Justice Scalia's passing in February 2016, the former Scalia clerk became a fixture of the Federalist Society speaking circuit, with six talks in the span of a year. That rate would accelerate after Barrett was confirmed to the Seventh Circuit in October 2017. I do not recall ever seeing Barrett at any Federalist Society event before 2017. And as best as I can remember, I met her for the first time in August 2017 at a law professor conference in Florida. She warmly said hello to me, but I was embarrassed that I didn't know who she was; it took me a few moments to recall that she was the professor from Notre Dame who had been nominated to the Seventh Circuit. That was all I knew about her.
