Law Justice Amy Coney Barrett Megathread

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So the announcer at the rose garden announced her as she walked out with the president.

will find an article soon.

e: he official announced her as his third pick.

e2:

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The long-term academic, appeals court judge and mother of seven was the hot favourite for the Supreme Court seat.

Donald Trump - who as sitting president gets to select nominees - reportedly once said he was "saving her" for this moment: when elderly Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and a vacancy on the nine-member court arose.

It took the president just over a week to fast-track the 48-year-old conservative intellectual into the wings. This is his chance to tip the court make-up even further to the right ahead of the presidential election, when he could lose power.

Barrett's record on gun rights and immigration cases imply she would be as reliable a vote on the right of the court, as Ginsburg was on the left, according to Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University.

"Ginsburg maintained one of the most consistent liberal voting records in the history of the court. Barrett has the same consistency and commitment," he adds. "She is not a work-in-progress like some nominees. She is the ultimate 'deliverable' for conservative votes."

And her vote, alongside a conservative majority, could make the difference for decades ahead, especially on divisive issues such as abortion rights and the Affordable Care Act (the Obama-era health insurance provider).

Barrett's legal opinions and remarks on abortion and gay marriage have made her popular with the religious right, but earned vehement opposition from liberals.

But as a devout Catholic, she has repeatedly insisted her faith does not compromise her work.

Barrett lives in South Bend, Indiana, with her husband, Jesse, a former federal prosecutor who is now with a private firm. The couple have seven children, including two adopted from Haiti. She is the oldest of seven children herself.

Known for her sharp intellect, she studied at the University of Notre Dame's Law School, graduating first in her class, and was a clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, who, in her words, was the "staunchest conservative" on the Supreme Court at the time.

Like her mentor Scalia, she is an originalist, which is a belief that judges should attempt to interpret the words of the Constitution as the authors intended when they were written.

Many liberals oppose that strict approach, saying there must be scope for moving with the times.

Barrett has spent much of her career as a professor at her alma mater, Notre Dame, where she was voted professor of the year multiple times. One of students, Deion Kathawa, who took a class with her earlier this year, told the BBC she was popular because she involved everyone in discussions. He found her "collegial, civil, fair-minded, intellectually sharp, and devoted to the rule of law secured by our Constitution".

Another student told the WBEZ new site: "I feel somewhat conflicted because … she's a great professor. She never brought up politics in her classroom... But I do not agree with her ideologies at all. I don't think she would be good for this country and the Supreme Court."

Barrett was selected by President Trump to serve as a federal appeals court judge in 2017, sitting on the Seventh Circuit, based in Chicago. She regularly commutes to the court from her home - more than an hour and half away. The South Bend Tribune once carried an interview from a friend saying she was an early riser, getting up between 04:00 and 05:00. "It's true," says Paolo Carozza, a professor at Notre Dame. "I see her at the gym shortly after then."

Carozza has watched Barrett go from student to teacher to leading judge, and speaks about her effusively. "It's a small, tight-knit community, so I know her socially too. She is ordinary, warm, kind."

A religious man himself, he thinks it is reasonable to question a candidate about whether their beliefs would interfere with their work. "But she has answered those questions forcefully... I fear she is now being reduced to an ideological caricature, and that pains me, knowing what a rich and thoughtful person she is."

Her confirmation hearing for the appeals court seat featured a now-infamous encounter with Senator Dianne Feinstein, who voiced concerns about how her faith could affect her thinking on the law. "The dogma lives loudly within you," said Mrs Feinstein in an accusatory tone. Defiant Catholics adopted the phrase as a tongue-in-cheek slogan on mugs.

Barrett has defended herself on multiple occasions. "I would stress that my personal church affiliation or my religious belief would not bear in the discharge of my duties as a judge," she once said.

However, her links to a particularly conservative Christian faith group, People of Praise, have been much discussed in the US press. LGBT groups have flagged the group's network of schools, which have guidelines stating a belief that sexual relations should only happen between heterosexual married couples.

LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign has voiced strong opposition to Barrett's confirmation, declaring her an "absolute threat to LGBTQ rights".

The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice research organisation, declined comment on Barrett specifically, but said appointing any new conservative Supreme Court justice would "be devastating for sexual and reproductive health and rights".

To secure the position on the Supreme Court - a lifelong job - Barrett will still have to pass a gruelling confirmation hearing, where Democratic senators are likely to take a tough line, bringing up many of their voters' concerns.

Professor Turley thinks she will take it her stride, due to the "civil and unflappable disposition" she showed during the hostile questioning for the appeals court position.

"She is someone who showed incredible poise and control… her [appeals court] confirmation hearing was a dry run for a Supreme Court confirmation. She has already played in the World Series."

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President Trump on Saturday announced he has chosen Amy Coney Barrett as his pick to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- a move that could significantly shift the nation's highest court to the right if she's confirmed by the Senate.

“Today it is my honor to nominate one of our nation's most brilliant and gifted legal minds to the Supreme Court," Trump said in the Rose Garden alongside Barrett. "She is a woman of unparalleled achievement, towering intellect, sterling credentials and unyielding loyalty to the Constitution -- Judge Amy Coney Barrett.”

Trump announced Barrett, a judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, who had been considered by Trump for the vacancy left by the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2018. Trump eventually chose now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh instead.

Ginsburg, a liberal trailblazer who was a consistent vote on the court’s liberal wing, died last week at 87. The announcement sets up what is likely to be a fierce confirmation battle as Republicans attempt to confirm Barrett before the election on Nov. 3.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised to put the nominee up for a vote, despite the objections of Senate Democrats -- who cite McConnell’s refusal to give Obama nominee Merrick Garland a hearing in 2016.

A source familiar with the process told Fox News that Oct. 12 is the target date for the beginning of confirmation hearings. This means that Barrett, 48, could potentially be confirmed by the end of the month and just days before the election.

Barrett, a former Notre Dame professor and a mother of seven, is a devout Catholic and pro-life -- beliefs that were raised as a problem by Democrats during her 2017 confirmation hearing to her seat on the 7th Circuit.

"The dogma lives loudly within you, and that's of concern," Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told Barrett. She was eventually confirmed 55-43.

Trump was also believed to have been considering candidates including 11th Circuit Judge Barbara Lagoa. Trump had said publicly that he had five potential picks he was considering.

A source told Fox News that Trump had taken note of how “tough” Barrett was when she faced the tough confirmation fight in 2017 and had kept her very much at the front of his mind since then.

The source said Trump met her during the considerations on who to replace Kennedy in 2018, talked to a lot of people about her and wanted to keep her in place through the Kavanaugh vetting process in case there was an issue. Kavanaugh did face hurdles in his confirmation battle, but that came after his nomination was announced.

The source said that after Ginsburg died, Barrett was the only candidate he met and spoke with at length, although he made a few calls to Lagoa because some people were pushing him very hard to do so. But ultimately Barrett was always at the front of Trump’s mind to fill a Ginsburg vacancy.

Should she be confirmed, Barrett would be Trump’s third Supreme Court confirmation. That’s more than two-term Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- who each put two justices on the court.

Democrats have vowed to oppose the pick, but the Senate math does not appear to be in their favor. Republicans have 53 Senate seats and Barrett only needs 50 to be confirmed -- with Vice President Mike Pence acting as a tie breaker in such a case.

So far, only Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, have indicated they oppose moving forward with a confirmation before the election. Murkowski has since suggested she still may vote for the nominee.

Fox News' John Roberts, Mike Emanuel and Tyler Olson contributed to this report.

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Finally caught up with this thread, and I just want to say:

The GOP should expedite the process of ACB's confirmation as much as possible. That is all for now.
 
I agree that Lagoa is not as safe a choice as he made her out to be, if only because of the vetting that hasn't been done on her. We just don't know much about her life, and something negative outside of judicial decisions could really hurt her. So in that sense, ACB was a good choice. Still, a lot of conservatives (e.g. Fox news neocons) think she's a slam dunk when there is a significant chance it won't be. She's super smart, though, so hopefully she's prepared to cut through idiots like Hirono or Kamala.
Neither candidate is necessarily 'good'. Both have some fairly big downsides, and simply put there was no great options with the kind of time crunch we have here. Barrett wins due to being pre-vetted, and being able to cut out weeks of time by that.

Barrett has been in the public eye as the presumed RBG replacement for at least two years now. She’s been the heart of every backroom casual discussion among Senators. So the political capital for her has been built up. The GOP Senators have had plenty of time to think about her. Cocaine Mitch has had 2 years to get his ducks in a row for Barrett. There is minimal political blowback on his Senators because the name has been out there for so long. Throwing a surprise in there would just complicate things.

This can't be real. This is nanny state shit. They actually believe that democrat voters are idiots.

and they are rarely proven wrong.
 
Barrett has been in the public eye as the presumed RBG replacement for at least two years now. She’s been the heart of every backroom casual discussion among Senators. So the political capital for her has been built up. The GOP Senators have had plenty of time to think about her. Cocaine Mitch has had 2 years to get his ducks in a row for Barrett. There is minimal political blowback on his Senators because the name has been out there for so long. Throwing a surprise in there would just complicate things.



and they are rarely proven wrong.

I'd say that the biggest reason Amy got the nod over Lagoa is that Lagoa, judicially, is a complete unknown. Her two major judicial appointments were as a judge on the Florida Supreme Court (which almost never deals with cases that have questions of a federal nature) and a federal court appointment which she has sat on for like 11 months. She's a black box judicially with nobody certain how she would rule on certain issues, and that probably weighed heavily against her. Nobody wants another Justice Souter situation, where the Republicans pushed a nominee precisely because he was a judicial unknown, only to be caught with their pants down when they realized he was far more liberal than they wanted, far too late to do anything about it. Amy is, at the very least, a known quantity.
 
acb_babylon_bee.jpg acb_handmaids_tale.jpg
 
Old tortoise Mitch weighs in on the goofy Coral Anika Theill allegations and how the media lapped them up.

 
It's the "everything White people do is racist" thing again. Racist is becoming a racial slur at this point, it's ridiculous.
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The level of shrill mental illness is hitting levels higher and faster than I thought it would. Seriously this type of filth should make it clear why we are not a "nation" and why the idea of all of us living together and simply being "on different teams" is a complete fallacy.
If you're referring to race, remember that liberal Whites and Jews are the ones pushing this anti-White stuff the hardest. The biggest social canyons in America are ideology and wealth.
 
Old tortoise Mitch weighs in on the goofy Coral Anika Theill allegations and how the media lapped them up.

mcconnell-barrett.mp4
WaPo stalking a youth group? I can say with authority (after 10 years of volunteering) that a lot of Catholic youth ministry sucks at retaining young people in the faith, despite our best efforts.

Meanwhile, WaPo thinks this group is a mortal threat to Our Democracy™️ while the head of ISIS was just an Austere Religous Scholar.

...and then one day, for no reason other than being stupid fascist meanie poopyheads, people stopped listening to and believing the Experts and Journalists.

It's the "everything White people do is racist" thing again. Racist is becoming a racial slur at this point, it's ridiculous.
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The level of shrill mental illness is hitting levels higher and faster than I thought it would. Seriously this type of filth should make it clear why we are not a "nation" and why the idea of all of us living together and simply being "on different teams" is a complete fallacy.
Reacting to someone's good deeds with this level of hatred, scorn, and cynicism is downright ghoulish. An ever-growing part of me wants to curbstomp these shitbirds (in CoD) just so they'll have something valid to cry about.
 
Reacting to someone's good deeds with this level of hatred, scorn, and cynicism is downright ghoulish. An ever-growing part of me wants to curbstomp these shitbirds (in CoD) just so they'll have something valid to cry about.
Don't worry, they're afraid an irrelevant men's social group will do that so maybe we'll get lucky.
 
Systemic racism? In Haiti? The one and only country on Earth populated by the descendents of the longest-running slave revolt in the history of the world?
 
Yes, between the 90% that is full black and the 10% that is only half black.

True. The former mulattoes dominated Haitian politics for decades after the revolution. Over time this mostly became a matter of wealth and social status though.

In Liberia something similar happened, where Americo-Liberians dominated the natives for decades before the 1980 coup and subsequent collapse.
 
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"Black Lives Matter!"
"OK, I'll adopt two orphans from one of the poorest countries on earth and give them a vastly better life."
"No, those black lives don't matter. You need to leave them there, appallingly ignorant and eating dirt cookies to stave off hunger pains, white devil."

Ask the kids themselves and I'll bet that they're pretty fucking happy with how things have turned out for them.
 
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