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Amy Coney Barrett (view source)
Revision as of 01:45, September 20, 2020
, 01:45, September 20, 2020Added to page
Her nomination was heard in September by the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Barrett was sharply criticized by its [[Democratic]] members, including [[Dick Durbin]] and [[Dianne Feinstein]], who seemed less concerned about her legal and judicial credentials than about whether she would uphold ''[[Roe vs. Wade]]''. In 1998, Barrett had written that Catholic judges who objected to [[capital punishment]] on religious grounds should consider recusing themselves; moreover, during her time at Notre Dame she had been part of a [[pro-life]] faculty organization, and in 2015 had signed a joint letter to Catholic bishops affirming "the value of human life from conception to natural death." Though Barrett stated during the hearing that judges must rule according to the law and not to their personal opinions, Feinstein and Durbin remained hostile, Feinstein in particular remarking that "the dogma lives loudly within you": a line that drew considerable criticism from some observers, who raised concerns that Senate Democrats were applying an unconstitutional "religious test" to Barrett.
Her nomination was heard in September by the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Barrett was sharply criticized by its [[Democratic]] members, including [[Dick Durbin]] and [[Dianne Feinstein]], who seemed less concerned about her legal and judicial credentials than about whether she would uphold ''[[Roe vs. Wade]]''. In 1998, Barrett had written that Catholic judges who objected to [[capital punishment]] on religious grounds should consider recusing themselves; moreover, during her time at Notre Dame she had been part of a [[pro-life]] faculty organization, and in 2015 had signed a joint letter to Catholic bishops affirming "the value of human life from conception to natural death." Though Barrett stated during the hearing that judges must rule according to the law and not to their personal opinions, Feinstein and Durbin remained hostile, Feinstein in particular remarking that "the dogma lives loudly within you": a line that drew considerable criticism from some observers, who raised concerns that Senate Democrats were applying an unconstitutional "religious test" to Barrett.
In October 2017, Barrett's nomination was passed through the committee on a party-line vote and brought before the Senate, which voted to confirm her by a vote of 55-42. She won the support of all [[Republican]] senators, as well as three Democrats ([[Joe Donnelly]], [[Tim Kaine]], and [[Joe Manchin]]). Barrett was the first woman appointed to the federal courts during Trump's presidency.
In October 2017, Barrett's nomination was passed through the committee on a party-line vote and brought before the Senate, which voted to confirm her by a vote of 55-42. She won the support of all [[Republican]] senators, as well as three Democrats ([[Joe Donnelly]], [[Tim Kaine]], and [[Joe Manchin]]). Barrett was the first woman appointed to the federal courts during Trump's presidency, and the first of four Trump appointees to the Seventh Circuit Court.
During Barrett's time on the Seventh Circuit, she has written two opinions considered of particular importance. In ''Doe v. Purdue University'' (2019), Barrett wrote the majority opinion finding in favor of an anonymous male student at [[Purdue University]] who had been suspended and stripped of his scholarship by university administrators who had ruled him guilty of sexual assault. Barrett noted that the administrators had utterly failed to provide the student with [[due process]], and had arbitrarily favored his female accuser's testimony over his. "It is plausible," she concluded, that the university "chose to believe {John Doe's accuser} because she is a woman and to disbelieve John because he is a man....John's allegations raise a plausible inference that he was denied an educational benefit on the basis of his sex."<ref>https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca7/17-3565/17-3565-2019-06-28.html</ref>
Barrett's other significant opinion, her dissent in ''Kanter v. Barr'' (2019), regarded the issue of gun-ownership rights for convicted felons. The majority upheld a lower-court decision that Kanter (the plaintiff), who had earlier been found guilty of mail fraud, was automatically disqualified from owning a firearm; in her dissent, Barrett argued that Kanter's crime, though a felony, was nonviolent, and to lose one's gun-ownership rights regardless of the nature of the felony was based neither on the wording of the [[Constitution]] nor on standards of common sense. Furthermore, she added, it ought to be the rule that, even if felons, citizens retained their constitutional rights by default, unless or until their rights were curtailed by government action (rather than automatically losing them by falling into a designated category).<ref>https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca7/18-1478/18-1478-2019-03-15.html</ref>
== Coronavirus jurisprudence ==
== Coronavirus jurisprudence ==