Judge Amy Coney Barrett is different. Nominated to fill the Supreme Court seat of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Barrett was attacked by Democrats, the far Left, and the media. She was targeted as a religious extremist (she’s Catholic) and someone whose motives in adopting two black Haitian children were suspect. Yet as these matters were being publicized, support for her confirmation increased.
Her critics quickly concluded Barrett couldn’t be “Borked” — that is, having her nomination brought down by smears involving her private life and personal character as Judge Robert Bork’s reputation was in 1987. Democrats were left with delaying tactics, hoping for the clock to run out on her nomination.
The Republican plan is to vote on Barrett a few days before the national election on Nov. 3. “Confirming Amy will help you and help our guys,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told a hospitalized President Trump. Indeed, both Trump and GOP senators appear to need all the help they can get to survive.
Assuming Joe Biden is elected president, Democrats and the media will demand Republicans back down and let Biden fill the court vacancy. In all likelihood, neither Trump nor McConnell will step aside voluntarily.
Republicans, even if Democrats win a Senate majority on Nov. 3, would still be in control until Dec. 31. That would give McConnell nearly two months to thwart Democratic schemes to keep the Senate from voting to confirm Barrett. McConnell is a good bet to win this one.
He is strongly committed to Barrett. She would be the crown on the greatest achievement of the Trump years: transforming the federal courts into a conservative-dominated institution.
That Barrett, 48, is a factor in all this reflects another of her differences. Rare in the case of a federal judge, Barrett has a national following. As a professor at Notre Dame Law School for 15 years, she was a sought-after speaker nationwide and a prolific author of essays and law review articles.
But there is still another Barrett difference: her personal life. She is renowned for her kindness and her willingness to drop everything to help someone. She and her husband have seven children. Her friends insist she has a unique trait: “She has no political side.” Still, almost like a politician, she has a base of supporters, allies, and admirers.
It was not surprising that she was a finalist for Trump’s second Supreme Court nomination in 2018. Brett Kavanaugh got it. But this year, she was the front-runner.
Barrett grew up in a suburb of New Orleans in a family with seven children. She was a fine student, but she lacked the attribute that each of the eight current Supreme Court justices has: an Ivy League diploma. Justices are snobs about whom they choose as clerks.
Here are the undergraduate and law schools of those eight: John Roberts (Harvard, Harvard Law), Sam Alito (Princeton, Yale Law), Clarence Thomas (Holy Cross, Yale Law), Neil Gorsuch (Columbia, Harvard Law), Brett Kavanaugh (Yale, Yale Law), Stephen Breyer (Stanford, Harvard Law), Elena Kagan (Princeton, Harvard Law), Sonia Sotomayor (Princeton, Yale Law).
It’s a typical roster of high-court justices. Barrett went to Rhodes College in Memphis, then to Notre Dame Law — wonderful colleges but not Ivy League. Hers was an unusual path to the Supreme Court. But her next step was a clerkship with Justice Scalia in 1998-1999.
In 2018, at the investiture of Barrett as a judge on the 7th U.S. Court of Appeals, a fellow clerk, Ara Lovitt, during the same term told this story:
“Some years after our clerkship, at one of Justice Scalia’s law clerk reunions, I was chatting with Amy and the justice. After a while, Amy had to leave. As she walked away from us, the justice leaned into me, looking at Amy, and, beaming with pride, said to me: ‘Isn’t Amy absolutely terrific?’ This was high praise coming from Justice Scalia. He used to say that we law clerks were fungible. But the justice always remembered Amy.”
Barrett was always said to be Scalia’s favorite. Now, it’s been confirmed. She was also an acolyte. Barrett embraced his philosophy of originalism and textualism. That wasn’t different.
Fred Barnes is a Washington Examiner senior columnist.
