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https://www.dailywire.com/news/32643/watch-judge-amy-barrett-speaks-about-difficult-frank-camp

During a November 3, 2016 lecture at Jacksonville University, Judge Amy Coney Barrett offered an excellent answer to a question posed about SCOTUS selection.

Richard A. Mullaney, director of the Jacksonville University Public Policy Institute, asked Barrett:

[In the third presidential debate], Chris Wallace asked this question, which I think relates to how you select judges and what it might mean ... what criteria are you looking for when you go to pick the next Justice?

...Hillary Clinton mentioned she wanted someone who protected individual rights and minority rights. Donald Trump mentioned he wanted somebody pro-life. Neither of these, of course, are very Scalia-like, and so I’d like you to comment on that versus the selection criteria based on your view as a constitutional law professor as to what we’re looking for in a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

Barrett replied:

Those kinds of answers are, I think, what’s wrong with our nomination process. To say, “I want to appoint someone who is pro-life” or “I want to appoint someone whose primary focus is protecting minority rights,” the candidates are talking to their bases and talking to the electorate, and saying, “Signal – I’m gonna put people on the Court who share your policy preferences.”

As I was saying before, I think that’s not the right qualification for a Justice. I mean, we shouldn’t be putting people on the Court that share our policy preferences; we should be putting people on the Court who want to apply the Constitution and, by the way, on the individual rights or the minority rights, when the Constitution demands that minority rights be protected, that’s what we want Justices to do. That’s their job.

I use the example with my constitutional law students of Odysseus resisting the sirens. That the Constitution is like – you know, Odysseus ties himself to the mast to resist the song of the sirens and he tells his crew, “Don’t untie me, no matter how much I plead.” That’s what we’ve done as the American people with the Constitution.

We’ve said, you know, it’s the people sober appealing to the people drunk; that when you are tempted to get carried away by your passions and trample upon the First Amendment rights or minority rights, this document will hold you back, and it’s the job of the Justices – of judges generally – but then ultimately the Supreme Court, for the exercise of judicial review, to tell us – like in the flag burning case.

We understand you people, you American citizens, that you want to protect your flag, but you’ve made a more fundamental commitment to free speech that ties your hands and you can’t do so. That’s what it’s about. It’s not about “I like flag desecration/I don’t like flag desecration,” it’s about – are you going to enforce the limits that are there? But then, if the people do something you don’t like, if it’s not one of those situations where the hands are tied, Odysseus is tied to the mast, that you have the courage and integrity to say, “I’m not going to interfere in the democratic process. If the Constitution doesn’t restrict your ability to do, electorate, what you’ve decided to do in this particular statute you’ve enacted, then I’m [not going to] interfere. I will resist the temptation as a judge to impose my preferences on you and say that you are limited in the policies that you want to pursue.”