Posted on 09/20/2019 4:54:32 PM PDT by T Ruth
Her writings on faith and jurisprudence should worry conservatives.
The left is engaged in full-on panic over control of the U.S. Supreme Court—which Justice Scalia once described as having become a de facto sitting Constitutional Convention, subjecting every law in every state to the views of five lifetime appointees: an oligarchy of lawyers from Harvard, Stanford, and Yale.
As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s health concerns continue to loom, liberals are trying to spook Speaker Mitch McConnell into swearing off confirmation hearings for any Trump appointee during an election year. At the same time, The New York Times and The New Yorker are trying to drive Brett Kavanaugh off the court with still more unsupported, second- or third-hand allegations. The spectacle is positively Orwellian.
The next Supreme Court appointment, assuming Trump gets one, will be pivotal; we can’t afford for him to waste it by choosing a justice whom he thinks will be “easier to confirm,” despite his or her weaknesses.
Trump should recognize that no conservative appointment will be “easy.” The left has already shown us their playbook. It reads: treat as “literally Hitler” any jurist who might return to an honest reading of the Constitution on Second Amendment rights, abortion, or executive authority on immigration.
President Trump should not take the salacious nature of the smear campaign against Brett Kavanaugh to mean that he must appoint a woman. Why believe that leftists are incapable of crafting an obscene smear of either sex? Put nothing past these people. Nothing.
***
There will be no easy appointments; Trump should make it count. Trump’s presumptive choice is Judge Amy Coney Barrett, currently sitting on the Seventh Circuit. But I have profound questions about Barrett’s suitability for the high court, ...
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
“Yes, and this goes to the question of whether she would hew to the Constitution, not the red herring of whether she would impose the death penalty, which she would not be in a position to do.”
No, it goes to the question of whether she would feel the need to recuse herself every time a case is presented where the Constitution dictates conflict with those of her religious beliefs. (see post #115) Therein lies the rub.
https://stream.org/author/johnzmirak/
I know nothing about Zmirak. I’m not sure I want another woman on the US Supreme Court.
“Like Justice Scalia, these men are firm originalists, who interpret the Constitution in light of the original public meaning of its text—regardless of their personal or religious preferences. Justice Scalia, a devout Catholic and convinced pro-lifer, famously said that if he’d found abortion rights in the Constitution, he’d have ruled to uphold them—and favored an amendment to change it.”
God in heaven I miss Scalia. What a simple yet brilliant statement concerning this topic. He was the absolute quintessence of an Originalist/Constitionalist.
The question as to whether a law or a decision is in keeping with the Constitution, properly the subject of review by an appellate panel, is not the same as whether a judge on that panel, if sitting as a trial judge, would impose the death penalty.
He was wonderful.
No you missed my point.
When I say that "at least she will be an anti abortion hardliner" I mean that she will adhere to the church position that is anti abortion.
The Constitution leaves it up to the states.
I’m sorry but I believe that is a misguided conclusion based on an obtuse line of reasoning.
She has basically stated that this (intuit ANY) judicial decision whereby the dictates of law conflict with her “conscience/moral principles”, recusal is demanded.
She is effing superb....balls most men these days put in their wife’s purse
And she’s pretty
This assclown doesn’t like her cause she’s Christian
Boo hoo
This is America and most of us haven’t forgotten who founded it
While I disagree with it, I respect your point of view and certainly would not want Judge Barrett to become Justice Barrett if it meant she would need to recuse herself from important cases.
That would be my only worry and I have not necessarily convinced myself that is the case.
Deserves a bit of scrutiny though.
I will admit that Zmirak muddied up his argument bigtime via his long excursions about Catholic-this vs Pope Francis-that. All rather irrelevant to his main point.
But his basic argument is that a SC justice is to make a finding, not on whether such-and-such a law is wise or imbecilic, virtuous or diabolical, but on whether it is Constitutional.
I would argue that finding that the death penalty is Constitutional, would in no way impugn her virtue or make her a formal or material cooperator in a given execution, or in all subsequent executions. If she thinks it does, one wonders whether she thinks her decision constitutes Eternal Moral Law rather than what it is and ought to be, flat dry jurisprudential textual exegesis.
For the record, if I in the SenateI would vote for Judge Barrett for the USCC. But Zmirak has raised a valid point.
My initial post encapsulated my entire opinion on this topic. Apparently you’re at least partially in agreement with me as well.
The entirety of his opinion piece was based on her being Catholic (and the Pope), and if his intent was to do otherwise, he failed because he’s an idiot.
Has she recused herself from any relevant cases? If so, the author failed to mention any of them.
I’m not invested one way or another in Amy Coney Barrett I’m interested in conservative and constitutional jurisprudence, and as I’ve repeatedly stated, the author has not provided a shred of evidence that she would provide anything less, or named any judicial candidate who would provide more.
faux history
Yes, the idea that the framers were all Deists is indeed faux history.
The point was (supposed to be) that being a Christian in today's tyrannical climate is equal to terrorism and/or hate-crime...
In such cases, we'd hope she would rule Constitutionally, and--- separately --- speak up loud and clear, personally, if she thought the law to be Constitutional, but immoral.
Otherwise, we really *would* see the exclusion of people of faith from serving in courts of law.
Yes, I certainly will.
I agree. I am glad he has opened up the discussion on how far Ms Barrett might try to bend the Constitution to her own faith beliefs.
I remember well when Scalia angered many Conservatives, particularly many Catholic Conservatives, when he finally, late in his career, explained his true basis of opposition to Roe V Wade.
Scalia explained that as a jurist that opposition did not come from any religious belief about abortion. It came from his reading of the Constitution, with all its amendments, wherein he found no federal mandate anywhere to rule for or against state abortion laws.
He said he did not think the Constitution mandated that abortion be legal, nor could it be used to invalidate abortion laws in a state like New York.
Scalia said as a jurist, not as a Catholic, the Constitution was mute when it came to abortion.
THAT was not the definitive explanation many Conservatives and many Catholic Conservatives wanted to hear.
But I think Scalia was right, and on that basis I’d likely oppose Ms Barrett.
I would say to Conservatives who want a Constitutional ban on abortion, the same thing I have said to Liberals who agreed with Roe V Wade - what is needed is a Constitutional amendment, not jurists who will bend the Constitution your way.
They don't need to ban it, they just need to properly define it as murder.
“They don’t need to ban it, they just need to properly define it as murder. “
Same difference and a legislative short cut in my book.
How is that different than laws that have redefined “marriage”? Laws, which because they essentially redefine marriage, we oppose.
On the other hand, murder itself is whatever the law says is an “illegal” killing; meaning as long as it is not illegal, it is not murder. To me that is kind of morally wishy washy, and of no greater moral principle that what you can politically, get the law to say, or prevent the law from saying.
Whereas a “right to life” amendment, or its opposite, goes straight to the heart of the matter - life, and when life begins.
If human life begins when many of us think it does, then the life of the unborn infant in the womb has all the rights to life that we have, and protecting that life does not depend on redefining the meaning of murder - abortion is murder.
But, I admit the piecemeal approach, pro and con, is likely the only way the American body politic is likely to go, as neither side will get an outright majority in either direction.
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