Judge Amy Barrett, in a file image.MATT CASHORE / NOTRE DAME / Reuters
At 48 years of age, Amy Coney Barrett could become the youngest Supreme Court judge and the fifth woman in the history of the United States Supreme Court, according to the American press on Friday.
For Republicans, Barrett is the ideal candidate for a lifetime office charged with interpreting the Constitution.
In this regard, Barrett - as happened with the late Antonin Scalia, for whom the lawyer worked for more than 10 years - defines herself as an "originalist" or "textualist", those who pursue the philosophy that strictly contemplates the texts of the Constitution and try to apply in their sentences the original intention of its architects in 1787. The young judge belongs to the Federalist Society, the conservative judicial organization that has been fundamental in influencing Donald Trump when choosing judges to the Supreme.
If the White House confirms Barrett's appointment tomorrow, Saturday, the president will have forced the hand of the Republican majority Senate - complacent with the idea - to achieve his nomination before the presidential elections on November 3, altering the composition for many decades. ideological of the Court.
And it's only been a week since the iconic Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away.
The political battle will be dog-faced and incendiary.
In a climate of social polarization such as this country had never experienced before, the Supreme Court, guarantor of the Constitution and the ideological balance of the system, has become the last front of the political struggle of an unscrupulous politician like Donald Trump.
Remember that the late Ginsburg asked as a wish on his deathbed that his successor be appointed by the new president who leaves the polls in November.
A devout Catholic, when she was nominated for the current position she holds within the court of appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, the magistrate went through a tough confirmation process in 2017 as the Judiciary Committee considered that it was not very clear to her whether Barrett would be capable of separate your strong religious convictions from the rigorous application of the law.
Barrett is a member of a particular conservative Christian faith group known as the People of Praise.
As reported by various media, including
The New York Times
or
Newsweek
, this group has among its teachings that it is "the husband who must assume all authority within the home."
If confirmed to belong to the select establishment that has become in recent decades a kind of third chamber, an arbitrator of intractable disputes, Barrett would be the sixth Catholic member of the Court, all but Sonia Sotomator having been appointed by Republican presidents.
Judge Neil Gorsuch grew up Catholic but today is an Episcopalian. And the other two Thursdays, Stephen Breye and Elena Kagan, are Jewish.
This is not the first time Barrett has been considered for the position.
When Justice Anthony Kennedy retired in 2018, President Trump considered Barrett.
But those who knew the ins and outs of that moment say that the interview with the tycoon did not go well.
The judge had conjunctivitis, which forced him to wear dark glasses during the meeting with the president.
"She was certainly not on her best day," says a source quoted by the public radio station NPR who preferred to remain anonymous.
However, meetings in the White House with the president seem to have gone better this week (judging by the eventual nomination).
Barrett has even received the blessing of the almighty Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, who sees in women a bomb-proof conservative résumé in order to reshape American law and society for many years to come.
Ginsburg's antithesis
In the opinion of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Barrett "stands for all the things that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was against."
And the New York Democrat points out something else: "Many things about which the vast majority of the American people do not agree."
Born in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans, Louisiana, Barrett is married to attorney Jesse Barrett and the mother of seven children, one of whom has Down syndrome and two others were adopted in Haiti.
The death of Ginsburg and the speed with which the White House intends to replace the progressive judge raises concerns about the future of the sentence known as
Roe versus Wade
, which in 1973 established that the US Constitution guaranteed the right to end an unwanted pregnancy.
The fact that Barrett served under Scalia for many years gives an idea of the ideology on abortion that Barrett champions.
In the same way that
Roe
is in danger with an ultra-conservative majority in the Supreme Court, the future of the one already baptized as Obamacare could also be at risk with the appointment of Barrett.
The highest court, in fact, has a third assault on the law on its agenda the week after the presidential election.
The most critical consider that the lawyer has not been a judge long enough to be able to develop her own voice in this regard, especially considering that she would access the highest judicial institution in the nation.
But the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg has served Republicans on a platter - opportunistically - the possibility of replacing her with a conservative element that definitively decants the Supreme Court to 6-3, with judges akin to ideological and religious conservatism.
Subscribe here to the weekly newsletter about the elections in the United States