I was reflecting on the Supreme Court’s recent rulings and it hit me like a brick: every single female appointee to the Court has been either a gut-wrenching disappointment or an outright catastrophe. Let’s run through this hall of shame:
Sandra Day O’Connor (Reagan, 1981–2006): The original stealth liberal. Marketed as a conservative, she spent her entire career playing swing-vote princess, propping up the worst progressive precedents. She co-authored the Casey decision that kept the decaying corpse of Roe v. Wade breathing for decades with her mushy “undue burden” nonsense. In Grutter v. Bollinger, she penned the majority that rubber-stamped racial discrimination in college admissions, babbling about “diversity” as some sacred compelling interest. A spineless institutionalist who wouldn’t know originalism if it slapped her across the face.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Clinton, 1993–2020): The patron saint of judicial activism. A relentless left-wing ideologue who treated the Constitution like toilet paper whenever it got in the way of her progressive fantasies. She spent decades legislating from the bench on abortion, voting rights, and whatever other pet causes the Left adored. At least the old bat had a functioning brain—more than can be said for some of the diversity hires who followed her.
Sonia Sotomayor (Obama, 2009–present): The self-proclaimed “wise Latina” who turned out to be neither particularly wise nor especially acute. A dull, predictable, results-obsessed hack, she worships at the altar of federal power, racial bean-counting, gun control, and every other leftist sacred cow while sneering at religious liberty and the Second Amendment. She’s never met a progressive outcome she didn’t love, and the Constitution’s text or history is just an annoying speed bump to be ignored. Dim bulb doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Elena Kagan (Obama, 2010–present): The smartest of the left-wing mediocrities, which isn’t saying much. Sharp enough to be genuinely dangerous, she’s a ruthless operator pushing bureaucratic tyranny, administrative state worship, and progressive social engineering at every turn. Text, history, and original public meaning are quaint little inconveniences to be swatted aside whenever they interfere with the glorious progressive future. She’s the living-document express in human form—full steam ahead, Constitution be damned—full steam ahead on the living-document express.
Amy Coney Barrett (Trump, 2020–present): might be the most infuriating letdown of the entire Trump era. Hyped as a rock-solid Scalia-style originalist and a home-run conservative pick, she’s morphed into another Roberts-style institutionalist sail-trimmer. Quick to chase moderation, quick to side with liberals or the Chief on the tough calls, and pathologically obsessed with looking “reasonable” instead of delivering actual principle. She’s delivered some decent votes, but overall she’s been a massive waste of a precious nomination slot—a squish who talks the textualist talk but walks the institutionalist walk when it counts. Conservatives got sold a bill of goods.
Ketanji Brown Jackson (Biden, 2022–present): Words almost fail. This affirmative-action quota queen was picked for one reason and one reason only: to check the right skin-color and gender boxes. Her opinions read like they were scrawled by a confused undergrad who stumbled into constitutional law class after a night of heavy partying. Legal reasoning? Original public meaning? Statutory text? Coherence? All apparently way above her pay grade. She’s a consistent, lockstep left-wing activist who treats the Constitution and statutes as vague suggestions at best. Without her army of clerks propping her up, her writings would be even more incoherent and embarrassing—which is saying something. She’s the living, breathing embodiment of why lowering standards for “diversity” produces exactly the predictable trash results.
In summary, the Supreme Court’s grand experiment with female justices has been an unmitigated parade of mediocrity, ideological betrayal, institutional cowardice, and affirmative-action disasters. From O’Connor’s mushy moderation that kept toxic precedents alive, through Ginsburg’s open activism, to the modern trio of predictable leftists and the disappointing Barrett, every single one has left the bench worse off. The results speak for themselves: more judicial activism when it suits the Left, more institutional hand-wringing when conservatives need backbone, and a steady leftward cultural drift that Republican appointments were supposed to reverse.
This isn’t ancient history. Look at the rulings on abortion, race, guns, religion, voting and birthright citizenship—the female contingent has too often been part of the problem rather than the solution. Conservatives who cheered these picks got burned by stealth moderates, identity hires, and unreliable institutionalists. The data on voting patterns and key cases backs it up: the Court didn’t magically get more faithful to the Constitution’s text because it added women. It often got more political, more results-oriented, institutionalist and less rigorous.
The brutal truth is that gender was never the magic variable. Appointment politics, weak vetting in earlier eras, elite cultural capture, and differing judicial philosophies (originalism’s demands vs. living-document flexibility) explain far more. But the record stands: these six women delivered far more disappointment than deliverance from a conservative or originalist viewpoint. The bench is intellectually and philosophically poorer for the lot of them. If future presidents want better results, they need to stop chasing optics and start demanding ironclad, battle-tested textualists who won’t wilt under pressure—regardless of gender. Anything less is just repeating the same expensive mistakes.
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