Barrett won’t be able to avoid bias

On Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee started the confirmation hearings necessary to vet Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court.

The avowed goal of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican Party is to have her confirmed before the Nov. 3 election.

Few people dispute the judicial credentials of Barrett to sit on the Supreme Court, and her legal acumen has never been challenged.

But, let’s dispel the myth, the longstanding illusion, that she or any other judge, including all of the Supreme Court justices, can be dispassionate in their interpretation of the law.

Is it really possible to be a strict constitutionalist?

The expectation is that these particular judges have “superhuman powers” to interpret exactly what the intention of a law is and how it was meant to be implemented, without any biases affecting their rulings.

This is nonsense.

Regular, everyday Americans aren’t robots or Vulcans (Does everyone remember Star Trek’s Mr. Spock?) who can rid themselves of emotional, political or religious biases.

And neither can the justices who sit on the Supreme Court.

Let’s set aside this canard and face reality.

If confirmed, Barrett, like all justices on the high court (past and present) will judge with bias.

Everything in her life will have an influence: The values that her parents taught her, her elite (though not Ivy League) education, and the teachings of her Catholic faith — they all will have an influence on her verdicts, no matter how much she insists that they won’t or, if confirmed, how hard she tries to be a staunch constitutionalist. Ken Derow Swarthmore, Pa.