Jodi Kantor

As you say, when she was appointed, there were a lot of caricatures of her, but I think the caricatures were both on the right and the left.

It's almost like people saw a woman with seven children and decided they knew what that meant.

You know, the right thought she was going to be

the savior who was going to complete the 50-year-old mission of the conservative legal movement.

And the left villainized her, as you say.

And she has turned out to be, I think a year after writing that story, I think it's still fair to say, she feels like the most independent of the Republican appointed justices, maybe with a tie with the chief justice.

But she has...

shown some willingness to vote with the liberals, not on the big cases, generally on the smaller ones.

But there are a lot of signs she's trying to stride her own path to some degree as a jurist and, you know, truly wants a reputation as trusted and independent.

Oh, I don't know.

Well, to answer that accurately would be to be God and to know everything, which I am.

This is what I think.

I think the justices are used to being in control of the narrative about them because they ultimately decide everything.

what is in oral arguments and what is in opinions.

So they might say that they're like the most transparent branch of government, but they control how much we see.

And so this reporting is meant to challenge that, just like in the classic spirit of journalists scrutinizing

power.

And it is coming at a time when they really are surrounded and under pressure as never before.

I mean, the security threats to the justices, the fact that even Justice Barrett's relatives were targeted last year means that Supreme Court justices are

have lost some of the anonymity that they used to enjoy in Washington and beyond.