Andrew T. Walker

@AndrewTWalker

Disagree with Justice Barrett's jurisprudence all you want—that's your prerogative. But discrediting her reasoning by appeal to her sex or her status as an adoptive mother—as some on the populist right now do—is a category error. It's also textbook Bulverism, C.S. Lewis's name for the trick of explaining why someone is wrong without first showing that they are wrong: "you only think that because you're a woman."

A legal argument is sound or unsound on its own terms. The sex of the one making it has no bearing on whether it tracks with the truth—the intellect's apprehension of reality is not indexed by sex. And the human intellect, male or female, is equally capable of apprehending truth. Truth corresponds to human nature's fittedness to reality as such, not truth qua sex. That sex carries real teleological weight for vocation and embodiment is true and beside the point here.

The adoptive-mother line is worse because it isn't even about her reasoning. It infers bias from biography. A judge's conclusions stand or fall on the law's construction (for good or for ill), not on the shape of her family. Attack the argument, or concede you don't have one.

I'm no expert on the Constitution and immigration. Justice Barrett could be wrong—if so, make that argument on the basis of text and history—not sex. Doing so on the basis of sex denies the ontological and epistemological equality of the sexes as made in God's image.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5878751&forum_id=2]#49972349)