Trump Chooses Amy Coney Barrett as his Replacement for Supreme Court Justice
On Saturday, President Trump announced that he will be nominating Amy Coney Barrett to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Barrett lives in South Bend, Indiana with her seven kids and her husband Jesse Barrett, a former federal prosecutor. She studied at Notre Dame’s Law School and graduated at the top of her class. Barrett also served as a clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, who was known as a strong conservative.
Throughout her career, Barrett has been a professor at Notre Dame and also serves as a circuit judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. On May 8, 2017, Trump nominated Barrett to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and she was confirmed by the Senate on Halloween of 2017.
Barrett’s nomination is causing controversy because her ideology on gun control and immigration is the exact opposite of the late Justice Ginsburg. Democrats are afraid she will undo all of the judicial changes that Ginsburg established throughout her career.
“Ginsburg maintained one of the most consistent liberal voting records in the history of the court,” says Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. “Barrett has the same consistency and commitment. She is not a work-in-progress like some nominees. She is the ultimate ‘deliverable’ for conservative votes.”
Just like Justice Scalia, Barrett is an originalist, which is the belief that judges should interpret the constitution as the founding fathers intended when it was written. Liberals are in opposition to this perspective because they believe that the constitution should change with the times.
Republicans are hopeful that Barrett is the best approach to getting rid of the Affordable Care Act and abortion rights, especially since her views on strongly conservative and catholic. However, she has publicly claimed that she does not let her religious views affect her legal work.