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Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s new book, Listening to the Law , excerpted in the Free Press on Wednesday, features a discussion of King Solomon. Barrett believes that the biblical king’s ruling about two mothers fighting for custody of a child can explain the difference between “doing justice” and applying the law, with the latter being the proper role of an American judge, according to Barrett. Remarkably, the justice manages to get both the Bible and the legal system wrong.

The judgment of Solomon, found in Chapter 3 of 1 Kings , is one of the most familiar stories in the Hebrew Scripture. As Barrett describes it, Solomon “famously mediated the

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