SWIFT JUSTICE
Trump taps Amy Coney Barrett for Supreme Court 39 days before election
President Trump proudly introduced federal appeals Judge Amy Coney Barrett in the White House Rose Garden Saturday as he fulfilled the most momentous achievement of his presidency: a conservative Supreme Court. The confirmation of Barrett, 48, could come as soon as Oct. 29 — five days before the presidential election.
President Trump named Judge Amy Coney Barrett on Saturday as his choice to replace Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court — a nomination that, if confirmed, would represent a long-sought victory for conservatives and the anti-abortion movement.
The Indiana judge’s nomination seals one of the most ambitious promises of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign: the conservative transformation of the federal judiciary. With Barrett on the bench, the court would lean to the right, six justices to three, for years to come.
“Amy Coney Barrett will decide cases based on the text of the Constitution as written,” Trump said during his announcement of the nomination in the Rose Garden. “As Amy has said, being a judge takes courage. You are not there to decide cases as you prefer but to do your duty and follow the law wherever it may take you.”
He also noted that Barrett will be the first mother with schoolage children to serve as a Supreme Court justice.
“Thank you for sharing your incredible mom with our country,” Trump told the seven Barrett children, who sat in the crowd with their father and First Lady Melania Trump.
In her own remarks, Barrett praised Ginsburg.
“She not only broke glass ceilings, she smashed them. For that she has won the admiration of women across the country and indeed all over the world,” she said.
“I love the United States, and I love the United States Constitution,” Barrett added.
She would be the high court’s youngest justice by five years. The lifetime appointment could mean a decades-long tenure that would remake American jurisprudence for a generation.
Barrett, a first-in-her-class graduate of Notre Dame Law School, would also be the only non-Ivy Leaguer on the nation’s highest court — a subtle nod to Trump’s populist base.
The choice cements Trump’s bond with the religious right, a key Republican constituency, five weeks before Election Day.
Conservative Christians have claimed Barrett as a hero since 2017, when Trump nominated her to her Indiana seat on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
At her confirmation hearing for that seat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) grilled Barrett on her Catholic faith, saying, “The conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told The Post: “Barrett is the ultimate deliverable for the pro-life movement. For conservatives, Barrett is the trifecta with the two prior Trump nominees” — Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
Barrett is seen as a judge in the originalist mold of Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom she served as a clerk before launching a career in academia. In her remarks Saturday, Barrett said she modeled herself after the late justice.
“His judicial philosophy is mine, too: Judges must apply the law as written. Judges are not policymakers, and they must be resolute in setting aside any policy views they might hold,” she said.
Barrett became a professor of law at Notre Dame and a noted legal scholar of statutory and constitutional interpretation, known for incisive papers arguing that the meaning of any law must remain tethered to its history and its framers’ intent.
But with only three years on the bench, Barrett’s judicial record is limited. She has endorsed a Second Amendment guarantee of an individual right to own guns and wrote a decision defending male students’ rights to due process in campus sex-assault tribunals.
She has also applied a by-thebook interpretation of immigration law — including a case siding with the Trump administration’s effort to restrict welfare benefits for noncitizens.
While Barrett was endorsed on Monday by the Susan B. Anthony List, a top anti-abortion group, she has been careful not to condemn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion a constitutional right.
But in scholarly papers, Barrett has explored the idea that past Supreme Court cases may be overturned, despite the precedents they have set, if the cases were “wrongly decided.”
One such case, she noted, was Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 abortion decision that upheld and modified Roe.
But an overturning of Roe would likely be a bridge too far even for a Supreme Court dominated by conservatives, experts say.
“I don’t think the conservative justices have the stomachs or the intellectual inclination for such a radical move,” said prominent First Amendment attorney Ron Coleman.
“What I do think, however, is that they’ll begin the process of trimming back what has become an absolutist, unconditional right to abortion under all circumstances.”
Much to Democrats’ dismay, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it a crusade to confirm as many Trump-nominated federal judges as possible.
The Senate has installed 218 of Trump’s nominees to federal court seats — more than it has for any first-term president since 1980. Trump appointees now make up more than a quarter of all active federal judges.
The fast-track plan to confirm Barrett ahead of the Nov. 3 election comes despite opposition by two GOP senators — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — but no other Republican has broken ranks.
A Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination could begin as soon as Oct. 12 and a confirmation vote in the wider Senate — where Republicans have a 53-47 majority — could be held on Oct. 29.
Democrats have been crying foul because McConnell refused to let lawmakers consider President Barack Obama’s SCOTUS nomination of Judge Merrick Garland following the death of Scalia in February 2016 on the grounds it was an election year.
Amy Coney Barrett will decide cases based on the text of the Constitution as written.