Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s nominee for the US Supreme Court, says she will disregard her political beliefs in her work as a judge. She emphasizes in a statement that the judiciary is not there to make its own policy. According to her, that is the task of elected representatives of the people.
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The staunch Catholic Barrett will appear before the Senate Legal Affairs Committee in the coming days. President Donald Trump has pushed her forward to succeed late progressive judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Senate has yet to approve that nomination.
The 48-year-old judge will speak to the committee for the first time on Monday. Her four-page opening statement has already been released. She will share that she learned from former Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia that judges should look to the letter of the law and disregard their own preferences.
Courts are not there to end all social problems and all forms of injustice, according to Barrett. Judges should not sit in the chair of politicians, she says. “The public shouldn’t expect that from courts either.”
Barrett’s nomination has sparked political arguments. Democrats are upset that Trump’s Republicans want to appoint one more judge for life so shortly before the presidential election. The two sides blame each other on hypocrisy and use the issue to mobilize their supporters in the run-up to the election.
If the nomination goes through, the judges seen as conservative in the US highest court will have a 6-to-3 majority. There appears to be enough support in the Senate to appoint Barrett. There, Republicans have 53 seats out of 100.
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