Then-Judge Amy Coney Barrett, nominee to be associate justice at the U.S. Supreme Court, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing in Washington, on October 13, 2020. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM
Since becoming chief justice in 2005, John Roberts Jr. has led the U.S. Supreme Court in some of its most difficult decisions involving the U.S. Constitution’s structure—an area of special interest to him. On Tuesday, freshman Justice Amy Coney Barrett, just one vote short of a majority, offered a competing vision of the original “plan of the Convention.”
The court, in a 5-4 opinion by Roberts, ruled in PennEast Pipeline v. New Jersey that states are not immune from private parties’ use of federal eminent domain power to condemn state-owned property.
