CON ACB
by Leyla Dumke
Despite Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s final wish not to be replaced until after the 2020 election, President Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett, blocking any chance for President-Elect Joe Biden to make a nomination when he takes office. But, regardless of the questionable timing, Justice Barrett was sworn in to serve in the U.S. Supreme Court on October 27, 2020. If Trump were to have chosen anyone, Barrett was not the right nominee pick.
Barrett’s predecessor, the liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (RBG), was a champion of women’s rights: equal pay for equal work, a woman’s right to choose, and fighting to end gender-based discrimination (which also helps men). She served 13 years on a US Appeals Court before the Supreme Court.
“She’s somebody that will probably go down in history as someone who has made decisions on what is in the best interest of the majority... of the minority,” Mr. Lyle Hayden, history teacher, explained.
After RBG’s passing, there was a rush by Republicans to swear in a conservative judge, who could undo Ginsberg’s rulings in cases such as Roe v. Wade. The scramble led to a selection of someone the President is familiar with— his 2017 pick for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Amy Coney Barrett (ACB).
Before her inauguration into the judicial branch in 2017, she was a law professor from the University of Notre Dame. That leaves less than three years of experience as a judge under her belt. Under three years... and now she’s catapulted into the highest level of the American judicial system.
Prior to her 2017 debut to the court, she was also once a clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia, an Originalist, and in her opening statement for her Supreme Court hearing said, “[Scalia’s] judicial philosophy was straightforward: A judge must apply the law as written, not as the judge wishes it were… as I embarked on my own legal career, I resolved to maintain that same perspective.”
The National Constitution Center defines an Originalist as, “[someone who] believe[s] that the constitutional text ought to be given the original public meaning that it would have had at the time that it became law.”
Originalist: [someone who] believe[s] that the constitutional text ought to be given the original public meaning that it would have had at the time that it became law.
This interpretation of the Constitution being held by a judge may seem reasonable upon first hearing. Even I found myself researching for this article thinking, “Hey, that doesn’t seem so bad, a judge should follow the original Constitution, it’s the supreme law of the land.” But it only took a few more minutes of reflection for the realization that it is problematic.
The original intents of many of the articles of the Constitution are outdated now in the 21st century, such as legal slavery (outlined in the Three-Fifths Compromise) and the lack of suffrage for everyone that wasn’t a landowning white male.
As time moves forward, we must progress with it and not stick ourselves to the past. Otherwise, nothing will get done—a judge who holds America back is no help to progress.
Most importantly though, by appointing another conservative judge, President Trump undermines the essence of our democracy. While his choice was technically legal, ACB’s deeply conservative nature destabilizes the Supreme Court, making it a conservative one, with only two liberal justices, and one left-leaning. That makes the remaining six, who are mostly staunch conservatives, control it. In the two-party system the US currently operates in, each party should be represented as equally as possible, as millions of Americans are on each side of the political spectrum.
Whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or third-party, all Americans deserve to be represented equally. RBG’s presence had a court fairly at equilibrium, but the selection of the conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett throws off the balance of the judicial branch.