President Trump To Announce Supreme Court Nominee Saturday: Judge Amy Coney Barrett Expected To Be Named

 The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has left an open seat on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). 

For pro-lifers this presents the opportunity to replace a rabidly pro-abortion justice with a pro-life justice. This would not be enough to put the court in a position to overturn Roe v. Wade but it could alter the outcome of cases that are chewing around the edges of Roe/Casey. 

The replacement of a pro-abortion justice with a pro-life justice is a necessary step for those of us who support the complete abolition of abortion. There are two approaches the court could take generally, the first and most likely would result in the issue returning to a state-by-state question. Some states would permit it and some states would not permit it. The other approach is less likely but the more morally and intellectually sound position and that is the one outlined by Josh Craddock as a 14th amendment based personhood protection of the unborn. The short form of his argument can be found at First Things while the academic paper laying out the argument can be found here. 

President Trump since he was a candidate for president has made public a list of potential SCOTUS nominees. The list was updated in 2017 after Justice Neil Gorsuch was nominated and confirmed to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

The 2017 List included Justice Brett Kavanaugh who was eventually nominated and confirmed to replace the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2018. Also on that list and reportedly a finalist for that nomination was Judge Amy Coney Barrett. 

On September 9th, President Trump released an update to his potential nominee list including 20 new names but specifically reaffirming names from his previous lists including Judge Barrett. 

This week President Trump announced that his nominee would be named at 5 p.m. on Saturday September 26th. 

Rumor is that President Trump has settled on Judge Barrett for the nomination. She was nominated and confirmed for her current job on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals on October 31, 2017 by a vote of 55-43.

Her professional biography is impressive:

• B.A., Rhodes College 1994
• J.D., Notre Dame Law School 1997
• Law clerk, Hon. Laurence H. Silberman, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, 1997-1998
• Law clerk, Hon. Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court of the United States, 1998-1999
• Private practice, Washington, D.C., 1999-2001
• George Washington University Law School, 2001-2002; adjunct faculty member, 2001; John M. Olin Fellow in Law, 2001-2002
• Professor of law, Notre Dame Law School, 2002-2017
• Visiting associate professor of law, University of Virginia Law School, 2007

Mary Margaret Olohan at the Daily Caller provides a nice background on Judge Barrett.

Ed Whelan at National Review has been posting a series of articles about Judge Barrett on a number of topics:

• On Judge Barrett and Baseless Claims About Recusal
• Liberal Legal All-Stars on Barrett’s ‘Remarkable Intellect and Character’
• Judge Barrett on the Second Amendment
• Judge Barrett on Textualism and Originalism

In addition to these articles I would suggest viewing a taped discussion that Judge Barrett gave to a Notre Dame alumni group to get a better feel for the potential next associate justice.

Check back tomorrow evening for more coverage of the announcement.