In a strongly worded dissent, Justice Amy Coney Barrett has taken a clear stand against the majority opinion in the January 6th case, criticizing their statutory interpretation. The Court had ruled that the crime of obstructing an official proceeding did not apply to the rioters involved in the January 6th Capitol attacks, a decision that Barrett finds fundamentally flawed.
Barrett’s dissent emphasized that Congress’s joint session qualifies as an “official proceeding,” and that the rioters had indeed delayed this proceeding through their actions, making it a clear case of obstruction. Barrett argued, “The case that [defendant] can be tried for ‘obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding’ seems open and shut. So why does the Court hold otherwise?” Her critique suggests that the majority’s interpretation failed to adhere to the straightforward text of the statute, choosing instead to perform “textual backflips” to narrow the provision’s reach.
Barrett’s ire was palpable as she accused the majority of violating standard interpretive principles by combining words from different subsections to reach their conclusion. “This interpretation might sound faithful to the statute, because the limit comes from a related provision rather than thin air. But snipping words from one subsection and grafting them onto another violates our normal interpretive principles,” she wrote.
Her concluding remarks were no less incisive: “Once Congress has set the outer bounds of liability, the Executive Branch has the discretion to select particular cases to prosecute within those boundaries. By atextually narrowing §1512(c)(2), the Court has failed to respect the prerogatives of the political branches.”
This dissent outlines her stance clearly: when Congress writes a broad law, it should be interpreted broadly, regardless of the potential political repercussions. The full text of Barrett’s dissent and further analysis is available here. For a more comprehensive take on her position, visit Above the Law.