On Oct. 16 at Northrop Auditorium in the University of Minnesota, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett will deliver the 2023 Robert A. Stein Lecture.
Barrett, for those unfamiliar, is a rather conservative justice on an already right-leaning court. As a result of the announcement she would be speaking, numerous student organizations and individuals have called for the Law School to cancel her event. This is a result of various Supreme Court decisions she supported on abortion and a variety of other topics.
I imagine readers of my previous pieces would assume I support this movement. I do not. I do, for the most part, severely disagree with the major decisions Justice Barrett has played a role in. That is not my issue here. Instead, I believe cancelling her lecture would be tremendously counterproductive, both in terms of the image the left is trying to project and the ideas they are trying to spread.
There is a stereotype among some conservatives that the left is against freedom of speech. That is wrong – it is the product of a gross series of over-generalizations based on a minority of people. This movement to ban Justice Barrett does not help that. However, I would not be so docile as to recommend a course of action solely to convince a few people of the incorrectness of a patent falsehood, just how I would not write an opinion column just to explain the dozens of independent sources and methods used to show how human-caused climate change is real.
Rather, I propose a more productive approach. Let Justice Barrett come to Minneapolis. Let her speak without interruption – although it is your right to protest with signs and shouting, it is not in your interest. Rather, in the days leading up to the address, spend time researching Justice Barrett’s stances on issues. Create a list of questions to engage her on and spread those questions to others who may be present and listening. When the time comes, ask her those questions, and spare no amount of discomfort or detail. Do not ask simple one-liners; ask a question that stems from a variety of facts and your own experiences and show her why her decisions contradict what you believe to be moral and just.
Am I under the illusion that asking even extremely well-thought-out questions will cause anyone to flip their beliefs? Absolutely not. Unlike Vivek Ramaswamy (who I am convinced does not believe half of what he says) or Donald Trump (whose ego prevents him from admitting when he is wrong), I genuinely believe Justice Barrett makes her decisions upon some combination of what she believes to be Constitutional and moral. That may be at odds with what I believe to be Constitutional or moral, but that is irrelevant.
When someone who is well-intentioned (do not conflate well-intentioned with non-combative since the well-intentioned can fight for what they believe) gets so unanimously rejected by an institution just for simply being at odds with what much of that institution believes, it polarizes them further. It validates the belief that the left is against freedom of speech.
The alternative could be this: she instead gives her speech and is confronted by a series of extremely tough but well-intentioned questions from people who disagree with her passionately but politely. When she heads back to Washington, she thinks about one or two of those questions that bother her, causing her maybe, just maybe, to be a swing vote on a key case that matters.
The truth is we can still resist polarization without restricting speech. Restricting this speech may not be illegal, but it is antidemocratic in spirit. We maybe cannot get someone to believe everything we believe, but we can move them half an inch. When that someone is a Supreme Court justice, that tiny shift can matter a huge amount to millions of Americans.
