By Joan Biskupic, CNN Chief Supreme Court Analyst

(CNN) — As she launched her media tour to promote a new memoir on Thursday night, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett rejected the notion that the country could be on the brink of a constitutional crisis.

“I think the Constitution is alive and well,” Barrett told journalist Bari Weiss, as they engaged in a conversation before a largely admiring audience at New York City’s Lincoln Center. “I think the country remains committed to the rule of law. I think we have functioning courts.”

The justice suggested an alternate view, as she responded to a question about the current tumult in this second term of President Donald Trump, “We’re in a time of passionate disagreement in America. But we have been in times of passionate disagreement before. … And we have come out stronger for it.”

Barrett is a pivotal vote on the nine-member high court, and while part of the controlling conservative supermajority, she has at times broken ranks and moved left. That makes her one of the most closely watched justices as the court confronts Trump’s aggressive new agenda.

So far, however, the high court majority – Barrett included – has provided little check on the president.

“Conflicts between the president and the judiciary are not new,” Barrett said when Weiss asked about Trump’s tirades against lower court judges who’ve ruled his moves unconstitutional. “This is a dance that we’ve seen before.”

All told, Barrett brushed aside suggestions of legal chaos as she faced a warm questioner in Weiss, founder of The Free Press media enterprise, and an audience that applauded the justice’s remarks throughout and gave the pair a standing ovation at the end of the hour.

This new media tour of Barrett, who reportedly obtained a $2 million advance for the book, “Listening to the Law,” hews to a familiar pattern of the normally press-shy justices. They avoid journalists until it comes time to promote a book. Thursday’s event will be followed by a major appearance Saturday in Washington, DC, at the Library of Congress National Book Festival.

From there she will undertake a series of media interviews and crisscross the country as she promotes the book she said she wrote to help people understand how the court works.

The tour comes as the justices are handling a series of appeals from the administration, protesting decisions by lower court judges that have blocked various Trump initiatives. On Wednesday, the Justice Department appealed a US appellate court decision that found the administration had acted unlawfully in imposing many of its tariffs. Trump’s legal team asked the Supreme Court to fast-track consideration of the case to resolve the uncertainty swirling around the centerpiece of Trump’s economic overhaul.

The justices also are likely to hear in upcoming months disputes over Trump’s firing of officials at independent agencies and various challenges to his broadscale deportation moves, including those taken under the Alien Enemies Act, a law previously invoked only in wartime.

Asked about Americans’ potential distrust of the high court, Barrett said, “I worry about the lack of institutional trust, too. … But I do think Americans should trust that the court is trying to get it right.”

Barrett’s book is officially on sale next Tuesday. CNN had access to a copy earlier this week and previously reported on highlights that included Barrett’s defense of her vote to overturn the 1973 milestone Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed abortion rights nationwide.

On Thursday, she repeated her stance that Roe was wrongly decided and therefore not entitled to the usual regard the court gives its precedents.

But she also addressed how shaken the justices were in spring 2022 when a draft of the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was leaked. Barrett called it “a huge breach of trust … shocking.”

“I personally worked hard not to let it … make me paranoid,” she added.

As she has on other occasions, Barrett stressed that the justices, despite how harshly they criticize each other in opinions, have warm relations.

Asked whether she regretted her biting criticism of liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in the court’s June dispute touching on Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, Barrett said without hesitation, “No!” Her response drew strong applause from the crowd.

But then Barrett took a page from her former mentor, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, and echoed his mantra, “I attack ideas. I don’t attack people.”

The-CNN-Wire
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