Barrett and Kavanaugh urge convention of conservative lawyers to stand up for their principles

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh delivered a pep talk to conservatives on Thursday night, telling an audience of right-leaning legal leaders and students in Washington, DC, they should stand up for their principles and “fight fire with strength and grace.”

Barrett drew hearty applause at the annual gathering of the Federalist Society for her message to female law school students who might feel pressure to conform.

“Being a conservative woman in a law school, particularly, takes a lot of courage and independence, and in many ways shows more feminism than just falling into some predetermined vision of what a woman should be,” Barrett told a packed banquet hall. “I think that all women should feel free to truly choose whatever it is they want, whether it is to be conservative or to be liberal, or to have large families, to not get married – whatever it may be.”

Asked about the killing this year of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and the heated reactions that followed, Barrett urged the audience to avoid “fighting poison with poison” and to instead follow the lead of Erika Kirk, who publicly forgave her husband’s assassin at his memorial service in September.

“In the face of the kind of poisonous hostility that led to Charlie Kirk’s murder, and which still exists on campuses and elsewhere … the best response really is to kind of keep Erika Kirk’s example in mind and is strength with grace,” Barrett told the crowd.

Barrett and Kavanaugh, both of whom were nominated to the Supreme Court by President Donald Trump, were speaking at the Federalist Society’s annual convention a day after the court heard arguments in a major case involving Trump’s tariffs. The justices spoke on stage Thursday night for more than 30 minutes in a discussion moderated by US District Judge Trevor McFadden, who was also nominated to the bench by Trump.

Neither justice mentioned Trump, nor the litany of cases they are juggling involving his second term. Justice Samuel Alito, another member of the court’s conservative bloc, attended the event on Thursday but did not speak.

Much of the discussion focused on the criticism conservative students can face in law school, though both McFadden and the justices appeared to connect that dynamic to the criticism the 6-3 conservative Supreme Court has faced in recent years – particularly since the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion it established. The court’s public approval has remained at historic lows, and protesters gathered at the justices’ homes for months after the decision. Kavanaugh was also the target of an attempted assassination in 2022.

The Federalist Society was founded in part as an effort to give voice to conservative law school students who felt out of place among their more liberal peers and professors.

For his part, Kavanaugh talked about what he learned from his role models, including the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

“He taught us also what it meant to have a backbone, what it meant to withstand withering criticism, what it meant to be fearless, what it meant to stand up for his principles even when they weren’t popular,” Kavanaugh said. “Especially when they weren’t popular.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.