Ginsburg successor? Amy Coney Barrett leads short list
WASHINGTON— The front-runner for President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nomination in the aftermath of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death is a darling of religious conservatives.
Amy Cone y Barrett, 48, a finalist for Trump's second high court nod in 2018 that ultimately went to Brett Kavanaugh, could move the high court further to the right – perhaps for decades to come.
Barrett rocketed to the top of Trump' s list of potential nominees after her 2017 confirmation hearing for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, when Democrats cited her deep Catholic faith not as an advantage but an obstacle. She was confirmed, 55-43.
“If you' re asking whether I take my faith seriously and I'm a faithful Catholic, I am ,” Barrett responded during that hearing, “although I would stress that my personal church affiliation or my religious belief would not bear in the discharge of my duties as a judge.”
She has written that Supreme Court precedents are not sacrosanct, which liberals have interpreted as a threat to the 1973 Roev.Wa de decision legalizing abortion nationwide.
In a 2013 Texas Law Review article ex pl oring when the Supreme Court should overturn past decisions, Barrett wrote that she agrees “with those who say that a justice's duty is to the Constitution, and that it is thus more legitimate for her to enforce her best understanding of the Constitution rather than a precedent she thinks clearly in conflict with it.”
She also wrote that the public's response to controversial cases like Roev.Wa de“reflects public rejection” of the idea that legal precedent “can declare a permanent victor in a divisive constitutional struggle.”
A former member of the University of Notre Dame' s“Faculty for Life ,” Barrett signed a 2015 letter to Catholic bishops that affirmed the “teachings of the Church as truth.” Among those teachings: the “value of human life from conception to natural death” and marriage- family values “founded on the ind issoluble commitment of a man and a woman.”
Barrett's membership in the religious group People of Praise has been scrutinized by national media outlets. The group dates to the early 1970 sand grew out of the“charismatic” movement, sharing some traits of Protestant Pentecostal groups. It has about 1,800 adult members today.
Some critics have suggested that the system of spiritual mentorship by People of Praise could raise questions of intellectual independence for Barrett on prospective cases. But Richard Garnett, a Notre Dame law professor and friend, said her participation in the group is “not so different from the lived religious experiences of millions of Americans.”
Barrett wrote in 2017 that Chief Justice John Roberts pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning in order to save it. Roberts creative ly interpreted as a tax the law' s penalty on those who don' t buy ins urance, allowing the court to up hold the cons titut ion ali ty of the law, she said. That law is coming before the court again in November, with Texas leading a group of states seeking to strike it down.