Trump Nominates Amy Coney Barrett As Supreme Court Justice

President Trump announced Saturday afternoon that he would nominate Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, setting off a politically explosive scramble to confirm a deeply conservative jurist before Election Day.

“Today it is my honor to nominate one of our nation’s most brilliant and gifted legal minds to the Supreme Court,” Mr. Trump said. “She is a woman of unparalleled achievement, towering intellect, sterling credentials and unyielding loyalty to the Constitution.”

Mr. Trump introduced Judge Barrett, a former Notre Dame law professor who now sits on a federal appeals court in Chicago and is a favorite of anti-abortion activists, at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. The event came just a little over a week after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Mr. Trump noted that Judge Barrett graduated first in her class at Notre Dame Law School and served as a clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, a job Mr. Trump called “one of the highest honors a young lawyer could have.”

In her own remarks, Judge Barrett said she was “deeply honored” and that, if confirmed, she would serve in the model of her former boss.

“His judicial philosophy is mine, too,” she said of Justice Scalia. “A judge must apply the law as written. Judges are not policymakers, and they must be resolute in setting aside any policy views they may hold.”

Judge Barrett’s confirmation would cement a 6-to-3 conservative majority on the court, leaving an imprint that could long outlast Mr. Trump’s presidency. The nomination is expected to consume the Senate in the weeks ahead and quickly reverberate on the campaign trail, injecting polarizing issues like abortion rights into an election season already weighed down by the coronavirus pandemic and a national reckoning over racism.

Senate Republicans have vowed to confirm the president’s nominee with haste and are preparing to oversee a lightning-fast confirmation process that could put her on the bench before Nov. 3. It would be a historic feat: No justice has ever been confirmed so close to an election, and in this case, voters in some states are already casting ballots.

Democrats, still furious over Republicans’ outright refusal to consider President Barack Obama’s nominee to the court in 2016, have argued that they have no right to fill the seat so close to the election. But locked in the minority, they are largely powerless to stop it. The Democrats intend to use the fight to stoke outrage about the possible loss of abortion rights and the Affordable Care Act, both of which could come under threat with Judge Barrett on the court. They hope it can help them reclaim the presidency and the Senate majority.

Of the confirmation process, Mr. Trump said with sarcasm, “I’m sure it’ll be extremely noncontroversial.” He added, alluding to the contentious confirmation process for Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, “We said that the last time, didn’t we?” Even still, he predicted that Judge Barrett’s confirmation “is going to be very quick.”

Judge Barrett is in many ways the ideological opposite of Justice Ginsburg — who led the court’s liberal wing. She has an unwaveringly conservative voting record in cases that touch on abortion, gun rights, discrimination and immigration. At 48, she would be the youngest justice on the court, with the potential to shape the law for decades to come.

“Should I be confirmed, I will be mindful of who came before me,” Judge Barrett said of Justice Ginsburg. She added, “She not only broke glass ceilings, she smashed them, and for that she has won the admiration of women across the country.”

Mr. Trump noted that if Judge Barrett is confirmed, she will be the first mother of school-age children to sit on the bench. There have been male justices with school-aged children, as well.

“Amy is more than a stellar scholar and judge,” he said. “She’s also a profoundly devoted mother.”

Legal philosophy
Since joining the appellate bench, Barrett has been a cautious jurist, plainly aware that she remains under a national microscope for any Supreme Court confirmation battle. Still, she has demonstrated her conservative bona fides on Second Amendment gun rights, immigration and abortion — positions Democrats are poised to voice opposition against in upcoming confirmation hearings.

Last year, she dissented alone when a 7th Circuit panel majority rejected a Second Amendment challenge from a man found guilty of felony mail fraud and prohibited from possessing a firearm under federal and Wisconsin law.

In 2018, she joined a dissent with fellow conservatives in an Indiana abortion dispute and referred to a provision that made it unlawful for physicians to perform an abortion because of the race, sex or disability of the fetus was a “eugenics statute.”

More recently in June, she dissented as a 7th Circuit panel left intact a US district court decision temporarily blocking a Trump policy that disadvantaged green card applicants who apply for any public assistance.

And religious conservatives were especially energized by an exchange with Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, during Barrett’s 2017 confirmation hearing for her current judgeship.

In a tense back-and-forth, the Democratic senator sharply questioned whether the judicial nominee could separate her Catholic views from her legal opinions.

“The conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein pointedly said. “And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country.”

Barrett supporters believed the nominee was being disparaged for her Catholicism. But Democrats said the exchange was in reference to Barrett’s own writings on the topic that had prompted questions from both parties — and concerns from progressives that she would chip away at abortion rights.

At the hearing, Barrett testified that her religious beliefs would not interfere with her rulings as a federal judge. But Democrats, including Feinstein, were not convinced, worried that Barrett’s views meant that she would strike against abortion rights as a federal judge.

Should Barrett be confirmed before Election Day or shortly thereafter, one of her earliest cases would be on the latest Obamacare challenge. The court is scheduled to hear that case on November 10.

Barrett has also cast doubt on the Affordable Care Act, authoring a 2017 law review essay which criticized Chief Justice John Roberts’ legal rationale for saving the law.

Culled Nytime& CNN