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She is deeply religious, ultra-conservative, and could soon become a United States Constitutional Judge: According to media reports, President Donald Trump wants to nominate Federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the powerful Supreme Court on Saturday. According to information from Republican circles, the 48-year-old Catholic will occupy the seat on the Supreme Court that was vacated by the death of Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Confirmation by the Senate is a matter of form.
Trump would send a clear signal to his conservative base a few weeks before the November 3 presidential election, and he should mobilize large constituencies of voters.
Because in conservative circles and among the religious right, Barrett is sometimes revered as a hero. The mother of seven, who has two adopted children from Haiti and a son with Down syndrome, is a strict anti-abortionist.
His religious opinions were always an obstacle. During her time as a law professor at the renowned Catholic private university of Notre Dame, she once told a conference that a career in justice is always only a “means to an end” and the goal is to “build the kingdom of God.” . Critics hold this judgment against her to this day.
At a Senate hearing for her confirmation as a judge in the federal appeals court in Chicago, Senator Dianne Feinstein accused her of being a Democrat in 2017: “Dogma lives strong in you.” But that only strengthened Barrett’s reputation among conservatives – one group even sold mugs with the lawyer’s image and Feinstein’s sentence. Barrett herself calmly replied to the senator that she could very well distinguish between her beliefs and her duties as a judge.
Barrett grew up in New Orleans in the conservative southern US and taught at this university in the state of Indiana for 15 years after studying at Notre Dame. For a time he worked for conservative constitutional judge Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016. From him he adopted a conservative reading of the US constitution.
Barrett is valued for her polished legal arguments, but she has very little experience as a judge. Her 2017 appeal to the Federal Court of Appeals in Chicago earned her her first judicial job.
His stance on the right to abortion, one of the most controversial issues in the United States, is not the only point that generates criticism about the barricades. He has also campaigned for the right to own guns and cracked down on the health care reform known as “Obamacare” by Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.
“Amy Coney Barrett passed both litmus tests for federal judges,” says Daniel Goldberg of the liberal lobby group Alliance for Justice. “The Will to Revoke Obamacare and Roe v. Wade”. With the landmark decision of Roe v. Wade in 1973, the Supreme Court anchored the fundamental right of women to abortion. Conservative and religious groups want to reverse that.
The chances of this should increase with a Constitutional Judge Barrett: If she is nominated as expected and then confirmed in the Senate, which is dominated by Trump’s Republicans, conservative justices on the Supreme Court have a majority of six to three votes. This not only increases the conservative majority in court; Because judges are appointed for life, it should last for years. Barrett, 48, could serve as a constitutional judge for decades.
But Trump has another reason he wants to fill the job with a loyalist as soon as possible: He himself has promised that the presidential election result could be challenged and ultimately end up before the Supreme Court. It certainly doesn’t hurt to have as many sympathetic justices as possible on the Supreme Court. (afp)
