Trump’s top choice ‘mixes faith and law’
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump’s top pick for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s US Supreme Court seat is Judge Amy Coney Barrett — a darling of conservatives for her religious views.
Mr Trump indicated the choice would be made after events honouring Ms Ginsburg in Washington are finished. Her body will be in the rotunda of the US Capitol on Friday after spending two days at the Supreme Court. She will be buried next week.
Ms Barrett in 2018 was on the shortlist presented by Mr Trump for a seat freed up by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, a position filled by Brett Kavanaugh.
At just 48, her lifetime appointment would ensure a strong conservative presence for decades, but her background is a new flashpoint in an already polarised country. Detractors warn she would shift the court firmly to the right
A practising Catholic and the mother of seven children, including two adopted from Haiti and a young son with Down syndrome, Ms Barrett is personally opposed to abortion, one of the key issues dominating the cultural divide in the US.
After a childhood in New Orleans in the conservative south, she became a top student at Notre Dame law school in Indiana, where she later went on to teach for 15 5 years.
Praised for her r finely honed legal l arguments, the e university professor - nevertheless has limited experience of actually presiding over a courtroom, having only taken to the bench in 2017 after being appointed by Mr Trump as a federal appeals court judge.
At the time, her Senate confirmation process was a stormy affair, with Democratic veteran Dianne Feinstein telling her: “The dogma lives loudly within you.”
That statement was used by supporters of Ms Barrett to accuse Ms Feinstein herself of intolerance, and only served to boost her standing among the religious right.
The conservative Judicial Crisis Network went as far as having mugs made with the judge’s picture printed on them next to Ms Feinstein’s words.
Without losing her composure, Ms Barrett responded that she could make the distinction between her faith and her duties as a judge.
But her critics were not convinced, and often cite the numerous articles she wrote on judicial matters while she was at Notre Dame, and point to her recent rulings as a judge that they say illustrate her ideological leanings.
At the federal appeals court in Chicago, she adopted positions backing gun rights and opposing migrants and women seeking abortions, as well as going against the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare”, the healthcare reform pushed through by the former president that Republicans have been trying to dismantle for years.
One of her lectures in particular, delivered to students at Notre Dame, is frequently used to reprimand Ms Barrett.
She said that a “legal career is but a means to an end ... and that end is building the Kingdom of God”.
“Amy Coney Barrett meets Trump’s two litmus tests for federal judges,” said Daniel Goldberg, director of the progressive lobby group Alliance for Justice.
“A willingness to overturn the Affordable Care Act and to overturn Roe v. Wade (the legislation that legalised abortion in the US).
“This nomination is about taking health care away from 20 million Americans and eliminating protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions.
“Barrett, who has even opposed ensuring access to contraception, would be a bane to reproductive freedom,” Mr Goldberg said.
On the other side of the debate, conservatives hail a woman they consider to be both “brilliant” and “impressive.”
On the internet, fans have even gone so far as to post memes of her dressed as Superman.