Amy Coney Barrett Throws Justice Jackson’s Welcome Party

Welcome to your party, Justice Jackson! It’s me, the hostess with the habeas corpus, Justice Coney Barrett, and I was thrilled and required to throw you this fête. Motion to proceed? Great. So, here’s my opening argument for this fun party: I don’t see color. Actually, ever since my Kappa Delta sisters and I drank elderberry schnapps and sacrificial deer blood in a ritual, I only see one color: periwinkle. Isn’t that darling? Love my K.D. sisters. Except for the newer ones who started a petition and collected thousands of signatures to let everyone know that they hate me. College, right? I miss it. Oh, and just F.Y.I., there’s really only one Supreme C. decree to abide by. To quote the honorable Chief Justice Roberts, “If this nightmare fortress is a-tremblin’, don’t come assemblin’.” This applies to us and also to the general public. It basically just means don’t try to enter or exit this building. The unscalable eight-foot fence sure helps!

O.K., let’s approach the snack table. I wasn’t sure what appetizers you liked, so I just stuck to tried-and-true crowd-pleasers: spoonfuls of yeast, powdered-egg pops, and baby formula that I’ve been hoarding since the late eighties. Justice Kavanaugh served Rohypnol jello shots at my welcome party, so, for this event, I did a very Coney Barrett take on them. Here—tilt your head back, it’s just like shooting a jello shot, except it’s vampiring the goo from an expired Easter Peep. Spicy, right? Justice Gorsuch loves these. He’s fervently against packing the Court, but super into packing a whole lot of Peeps into his gullet.

If it pleases the Court, I’d like to sombrely discuss party music. I asked Mary J. Blige if she would sing at this soirée, because who doesn’t love Mary J. Blige? Unfortunately, Mary said she’d love to sing for you, Elena, and Sonia, but she told me that I needed to “put my soul in a Mrs. Maytag and run it on ‘extra-soiled.’ ” But fear not. I did make a playlist called “Amay’s Partay Mix,” and yep, you guessed it—it’s unsettling, though it does set the tone for your welcome gift. Go ahead, open it! It’s a burlap nightgown. Justice Alito turned me on to these. Justice Jackson, if you don’t like your new nightie, I’ll have to hold you in contempt! You simply haven’t slept until you’ve buttoned yourself into one of these coarse sacks.

Next on the docket: some classic Supreme Court party games. First up, Spin the Gavel. Don’t worry—it doesn’t involve kissing, just wishful premonitions about who on the bench will die first. Justice Sotomayor gets really into it. She’s definitely our top gavel-spinner. Spin the Gavel is usually followed by Would We Miss You? The answer is always no, because we spend too much time together and these robes aren’t breathable. Then we play a few rounds of Which Pervert? We pull big, no-no allegations out of a hat and try to guess if each can be ascribed to Justice Kavanaugh or Justice Thomas. It gets super tricky because they’re both perverts.

Welp, looks like it’s time to make horrific small talk. So, Ke-tan-jay, you were a public defender. Wowzers. Haven’t had a public defender in these chambers since Thurgood Marshall. If it makes you feel any better, someone like me ruined his welcome party, too. Man, if I could only crack open a bottle of 1989 Gerber newborn formula—the good stuff—and pick both of your public-defender brains. I’d have so many questions! Well, actually, just one: Do poor people smell different?

I heard that you’re not into the coercion of criminal defendants, which is wild, because that’s, like, one of my favorite parts of the legal system. We’re like the next Scalia-Ginsburg—this is gonna be a blast. No, but actually, we do have a lot in common. Like how your parents overcame segregation and devoted their lives to equitable education and how my parents overcame nothing and devoted their lives to making sure that oil companies could legally continue contaminating the ocean. We’re both continuing our family’s legacies! Oh, you want to leave the party now? O.K., just one sec. I still haven’t given you the welcome card we all signed. Here it is. Haha, yes, it is a ne-exeat order, which, as you know, Justice, means that you are required to remain within the jurisdiction of this shitty party, until, one by one, we all die. And—sorry to “Fame” this—we’re gonna live forever! ♦