The confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett began Monday morning in what is expected to be a fierce partisan fight on Capitol Hill to decide the future of the nation’s top court.
Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) opened the hearings saying he expects it to be a “long contentious week.” He then called for civility by committee members.
“Let’s make it respectful, let’s make it challenging, let’s remember the world is watching,” Graham said.
Meanwhile, Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and many of her Democrat colleagues tied Barrett’s nomination to a threat to health care for Americans. Several Senate Democrats have used examples of Americans who are suffering from serious illnesses who rely on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, saying the patients would lose their health care if the ACA is struck down.
“Health care coverage for millions of Americans is at stake with this nomination,” Feinstein said.
Barrett’s potential confirmation is likely to solidify a conservative majority on the Supreme Court for years to come. Her nomination sparked an intense political battle between groups and lawmakers who wanted to block her from or swiftly confirm her to the Supreme Court bench.
Carrie Severino, president of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, previously told The Epoch Times that because Barrett’s confirmation will have a significant bearing on the ideological balance of the nation’s top court for decades, the judge is expected to face intense resistance from critics during the hearings.
The importance of Barrett’s nomination, she said, is similar to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, who was nominated to replace Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, the former swing justice on the court.
Meanwhile, senators from both sides of the aisle are likely to also compel Barrett to commit to voting a certain way in a particular case, or types of cases, Severino said, adding that if Barrett refuses, they could frame it as “she’s dodging questions, she’s trying to hide.”
“Either way, I can tell you ahead of time, she’s not going to be able to answer those questions, because as a federal judge, there are ethical guidelines that say you can’t commit to how you would vote in a future case likely to come before you,” Severino said.
Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s History
Barrett, 48, earned her J.D. at Notre Dame Law School in 1997. She served as a clerk in 1997-1998 for Judge Laurence Silberman of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and later as a clerk in 1998-1999 for Scalia, who died in 2016.After her clerkships, she was an associate at law firm Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin in Washington, D.C. for a year, and later moved to Texas-based firm Baker Botts in 2000, before leaving for academia.
In 2002, she became a professor at Notre Dame Law School, where she taught constitutional law, the federal courts, and statutory interpretation.
Barrett, who is a Catholic, has seven children with her husband, two of whom are adopted from Haiti. Her husband, Jesse Barrett, serves as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Indiana.
In terms of her judicial philosophy, she has been described as an originalist and textualist, a judge who promises to interpret the U.S. Constitution or statutes based on what the original authors intended at the time of ratification and puts weight on the actual text of the law.