The Washington Free Beacon has published my very favorable review of Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and the Constitution. Here are my opening paragraphs:

Four days before the presidential election in November 2016, the Supreme Court held a beautiful ceremony in memory of Justice Antonin Scalia. The event honored Scalia the man and Scalia the jurist. But for me, a deep sadness pervaded it. Not only was my old boss gone, but his jurisprudential legacy would soon be erased. Everyone knew that Hillary Clinton would trounce Donald Trump on Election Day. Scalia’s seat, which Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell had kept open since his death in February, would soon be filled, perhaps by Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland, perhaps by a more progressive pick by Hillary. Either way, the Court would have a new and emboldened liberal majority that would no longer have to depend on Justice Anthony Kennedy to wreak havoc on the Constitution.

In the cafeteria before the ceremony, I sat down at a table with other former Scalia law clerks, and I met for the first time a Notre Dame law professor by the name of Amy Coney Barrett. Little could she or I have imagined that four years later she would become President Trump’s third appointee to the Supreme Court and complete his process of transforming the Court into a body that would expand and entrench Scalia’s legacy.