Amy Coney Barrett

Judge

• Born: January 28, 1972
• Place of Birth: New Orleans, LA

• Education: Rhodes College, bachelor’s degree, 1994; Notre Dame Law School, juris doctor degree, 1997
• Significance: Federal judge Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to the US Supreme Court by President Donald Trump in 2020. She was chosen to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Although there was some controversy around her appointment, she was confirmed by the Senate in October 2020, giving the Supreme Court a solid conservative majority.

Background

Amy Coney Barrett was born on January 28, 1972, in New Orleans, Louisiana. She grew up in a family of seven children in the suburbs. Her father, Mike, was an attorney for Shell Oil Company. Her mother, Linda, was a homemaker.

Barrett grew up in a very devout Catholic family, attending St. Catherine of Siena Catholic School and St. Mary’s Dominican High School. After graduating from high school in 1990, she earned a bachelor’s degree in 1994 from Rhodes College, a Catholic university, in Memphis, Tennessee.

Barrett had the goal of becoming a lawyer like her father and attended Notre Dame Law School in the 1990s. She served as the executive editor of the Notre Dame Law Review before earning a law degree in 1997. While at the school, she met Jesse Barrett, who earned his degree in 1999. The couple would later marry and start a family.

Life’s Work

Barrett began her career by serving as a law clerk to Judge Laurence Silberman, who was a judge on the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC. Barrett then clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. She would go on to note multiple times in her career that she shared views very similar to those of the conservative Scalia.

Barrett returned to Notre Dame Law School to join the faculty in 2002. As a professor, she taught constitutional law, statutory interpretation, and federal courts. She was selected as a Distinguished Professor of the Year in 2006 and 2016. She was also a member of the group University Faculty for Life, which supported the idea that human life begins at conception and ends at natural death. Proponents of this view are known for opposing abortion.

Throughout her career, Barrett published several letters and articles stating her opinions about various aspects of the law. In 2013, she stated that she believed Supreme Court justices had the right to overturn past precedent, which some people speculated meant that she would be willing to overturn decisions the Court made in the past. The doctrine of respecting precedent is called stare decisis. In 2015, Barrett also criticized Supreme Court decisions regarding sections of the Affordable Care Act, a health care law supported by the administration of US president Barack Obama. She noted at the time that she believed the justices who dissented, or disagreed with the majority, had a strong argument in the case.

In May 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Barrett to fill a vacant seat on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. This court’s jurisdiction includes Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin and is based in Chicago, Illinois. Like other federal judge nominees, Barrett had to go through a confirmation process in the US Senate. Her record and strict religious views were debated, but she was eventually confirmed in October 2017 by a vote of 55–43.

Barrett had been on the federal bench for less than a year when President Trump had the opportunity to fill a Supreme Court seat. Although Trump interviewed Barrett for the post, he chose to nominate Brett Kavanaugh, who had a longer record of judicial decisions. On September 18, 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, leaving another seat vacant on the Supreme Court. With the 2020 presidential election just weeks away, President Trump and Senate Republicans acted quickly to fill Ginsburg’s seat. Trump announced soon after the justice’s death that he would nominate a woman to replace her.

The president officially nominated Barrett on September 26. Senate Republicans moved swiftly to finish the process well before the 2020 presidential election, which would take place on November 3. Democrats reminded Republicans that they had blocked President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court in 2016, more than ten months before the end of his presidency, on the grounds that it was too close to the election and the winner should make the appointment. Nevertheless, Republican senators indeed pushed through Barrett's confirmation hearing extraordinarily quickly and overcame Democratic efforts to slow the process.

During the confirmation process, many lawmakers posed questions about Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed the right to abortion in the United States. Barrett would not say whether she thought Roe had been decided correctly. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota asked Barrett if she thought Roe was a super-precedent. Barrett defined such cases as those that are settled and no longer seriously questioned. She said that calls to overrule Roe had never ceased, so it was not a super-precedent.

On October 26, 2020, the Senate confirmed Barrett to the Supreme Court by a 52–48 margin. It was the first Supreme Court confirmation in over 150 years without a single Senator of the minority party voting in favor, indicating the deep partisan division over the seat and Barrett's views.

Many conservatives saw the conservative majority on the Supreme Court as an opportunity to revisit Roe. The Court heard arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in December 2021. This case concerned the constitutionality of a state law that banned most abortion procedures after the fifteenth week of pregnancy. The decision was issued on June 24, 2022. Barrett voted with the conservative majority of Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh to overturn Roe. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., another conservative, voted against overturning Roe. The result was that a federal guarantee of abortion access was no longer guaranteed. Some states already had laws limiting abortion access on the books, while others immediately moved to pass such legislation.

Trump v. United States, another case with national impact, came before the Court in early 2024. Former president Trump's attorneys argued that the president has absolute immunity from prosecution for actions taken while in office. In her questioning, Barrett forced a Trump attorney to concede that some actions a president takes are personal and not official. The Court ruled that a president has broad immunity for official acts. Barrett concurred in part, writing that courts could decide if a president is immune from criminal prosecution by determining if the law applies to a president's official acts. She suggested that Trump could be prosecuted for some of his actions using this measure.

Impact

Barrett became a very popular judge among American conservatives, especially social conservatives. Her successful appointment to the Supreme Court gave that body a strong conservative majority, which observers suggested would have a profound impact on legal decisions in the United States. Notably, Barrett's previous record and public opinions indicated she might be willing to overturn Roe v. Wade. Her decisions also indicated that she might be willing to overturn decisions about the Affordable Care Act, aiding the Republican goal of repealing or weakening that law. With Barrett's relatively young age at the time of her confirmation, it was expected she would influence the court for decades.

Many socially conservative women focused on career success saw her as a trailblazer. She frequently stressed the importance of her family and faith above all else while navigating a high-profile career. Her supporters cast her as a role model for women who want to be successful but do not identify as liberal or even moderate on social issues.

Personal Life

Barrett married Jesse Barrett in the late 1990s. The couple had seven children, two of whom were adopted from Haiti. Their youngest child was born with Down syndrome.

Barrett often stated that her religion was an extremely important part of her life. She became a member of a faith group called People of Praise, which is made up of Christians from various faiths, although most are Catholic, and has members across the United States. It is a charismatic group whose worship practices—such as speaking in tongues—are similar to some Protestant practices. Members take an oath to support other members of the group for the rest of their lives. Some critics of Barrett claimed that her involvement in such a group could influence her decisions as a justice; however, Barrett claimed that, although her religion was important to her, she would not let her personal beliefs affect her judicial decision-making.

Bibliography

Allen, Kevin. “U.S. Senate Confirms Professor Amy Barrett as Federal Judge.” Notre Dame Law School, 31 Oct. 2017, law.nd.edu/news-events/news/us-senate-confirms-professor-amy-barrett-as-federal-judge/. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

"Amy Coney Barrett Fast Facts." CNN, 28 Oct. 2020, www.cnn.com/2020/10/01/us/amy-coney-barrett-fast-facts/index.html. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Breen, Kerry. "Who Voted to Overturn Roe v. Wade and Who Voted to Uphold It." Today, 24 June 2022, www.today.com/news/news/scotus-justices-roe-wade-abortion-votes-rcna35229. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Fandos, Nicholas. "Senate Confirms Barrett, Delivering for Trump and Reshaping the Court." The New York Times, 26 Oct. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/us/politics/senate-confirms-barrett.html. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Fritze, John. "How Justice Amy Coney Barrett Drove the Supreme Court's Debate on Abortion and Trump Immunity." CNN, 27 Apr. 2024, www.cnn.com/2024/04/27/politics/amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court-immunity-idaho-abortion/index.html. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Graham, Ruth. “For Conservative Christian Women, Amy Coney Barrett’s Success Is Personal.” New York Times, 28 Sept. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/09/28/us/amy-coney-barrett-christian-women.html. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Keeley, Matt. “Who Is Amy Coney Barrett's Family? Supreme Court Nominee Is a Mother of Seven and Has Six Siblings,” Newsweek, 20 Sept. 2020, www.newsweek.com/who-amy-coney-barretts-family-potential-supreme-court-nominee-mother-seven-has-six-siblings-1533120. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Landler, Mark, and Maggie Haberman. “Brett Kavanaugh Is Trump’s Pick for Supreme Court.” New York Times, 9 Jul. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/07/09/us/politics/brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court.html. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

McCormack, John. “The Most Important Line in Amy Coney Barrett’s Speech.” National Review, 26 Sept. 2020, www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-most-important-line-in-amy-coney-barretts-speech/. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Noonan, Peggy. “The Truth about People of Praise.” Wall Street Journal, 24 Sept. 2020, www.wsj.com/articles/the-truth-about-people-of-praise-11600990129. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Sullivan, Becky. "What Conservative Justices Said—and Didn't Say—About Roe at Their Confirmations." National Public Radio, www.npr.org/2022/05/03/1096108319/roe-v-wade-alito-conservative-justices-confirmation-hearings. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Totenberg, Nina. “A Dream for the Right, Nightmare for the Left.” NPR, 28 Sept. 2020, www.npr.org/2020/09/28/917554001/amy-coney-barrett-a-dream-for-the-right-nightmare-for-the-left. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

“Who Is Amy Coney Barrett? Meet Trump’s Supreme Court Pick.” Chicago Sun Times, 25 Sept. 2020, chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2020/9/25/21454492/who-is-amy-coney-barrett-meet-trumps-leading-supreme-court-pick. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Wolf, Richard. “Notre Dame's Amy Coney Barrett Likely a Front-Runner for Supreme Court Vacancy.” South Bend Tribune, 19 Sept. 2020, www.southbendtribune.com/news/local/notre-dames-amy-coney-barrett-likely-a-front-runner-for-supreme-court-vacancy/article‗25251440-fa16-11ea-be53-d721bab76758.html. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.