With just eight days to go before the 2020 presidential election Senate Republicans have voted under the wire to confirm Amy Coney Barrett as the next Justice of the Supreme Court, getting the number of Senate Republican votes required to send her to the highest court in the land, with the party line vote running 52-48. Barrett, 48, who has been a United States judge for only two years, will take the spot on the bench left empty when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18. The confirmation was made in a late night announcement on October 26 by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The House Republicans then tweeted out their congrats to the newest member of SCOTUS.
The Trump administration is wasting no time in putting Barrett on the court prior to the Nov. 3 presidential election. “Justice Clarence Thomas will administer the official Constitutional Oath to Judge Amy Coney Barrett at the White House tonight,” New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman was told by a senior White House official.
Barrett’s elevation was a given considering the GOP hold on the Senate. Her presence on the bench now means a potential shift to the right on issues such as gun control, reproductive rights, the environment, and the Affordable Care Act. Conservatives now have a with a 6-3 majority on the high court, including two other picks from President Donald Trump: Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. Barrett, a conservative Constitutional originalist, replaces Ginsburg, once one of the most liberal justices in the court.
During a marathon Senate confirmation hearing, Barrett refused to answer many questions directly, including whether the Constitution or federal law gives the President the authority to delay an election unilaterally. Rather than saying it doesn’t (the correct answer), she called it a “political controversy.” Barrett also could not remember the five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment. Barrett, a Catholic, is vocally pro-life and has ties to a extremist religious sect that partially inspired The Handmaid’s Tale. She has vowed that her religious beliefs will not interfere in her judgement on the Supreme Court.
Barrett’s confirmation in the first to come so close to a presidential election. In just over a week, the country will decide between reelecting President Trump or electing former Vice President Joe Biden. Democrats protested her nomination and Republicans’ immediate willingness to proceed with a confirmation, pointing out the hypocrisy of their refusal to do the same for Judge Merrick Garland in 2016.
Back then, McConnell said that it was unconstitutional to confirm a new Supreme Court justice in an election year. He hasn’t be able to provide an explanation as to why it’s acceptable now. Ginsburg, 87, left a statement on her death bed declaring that her “most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”