Eight days before the American elections, Donald Trump has just recorded a huge victory with the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett at the Supreme Court. The Senate gave Monday, October 26 its approval for the entry of this conservative judge, fervent Catholic opposed to abortion, into the temple of American law. An arrival which will considerably modify the balance within the high court.
After the death, on September 18, of the progressive judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the American president wanted to find him a (or a) successor (e) quickly, before the presidential election. Mr. Trump was counting on this confirmation of his choice by the Senate to satisfy his electoral base. In fact, during his term of office, he will have appointed three Conservative judges to the Supreme Court, which now has six Conservative judges out of nine.
The Democrats, for their part, denounced his desire to achieve a capital appointment – of a judge chosen for life – at a date as close to that of the poll, on November 3, but had few levers to oppose it . Because the Republicans are in the majority in the Senate, at least until the elections of November 3 since, in addition to their president, the Americans will also partially renew Congress.
The elected members of the upper house of Congress – in the hands of the Republicans – voted along almost strictly partisan lines, with 52 votes for and 48 against. During this solemn vote in plenary session, a simple majority of 51 votes was sufficient. If two Republican senators had expressed their opposition to this hasty process, one of them, Lisa Murkowski, warned over the weekend that it would not prevent her from voting in favor of the judge.
Devout Catholic
Amy Coney Barrett, 48, is highly regarded by the religious right, who values her view of the law and her way of life. This devout Catholic, native of Louisiana, in the conservative South of the country, has seven children.
From the end of the 1990s, then a young graduate of Notre-Dame University, a renowned denominational institution in Indiana, she embraced a so-called “originalist” reading of law by working for Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, who theorized this doctrine. It imposes to read the Constitution as it was thought during its writing. A vision prized in traditionalist circles, which criticize the highest court in the country for having moved away from the thinking of the founding fathers to change certain rights, including abortion or same-sex marriage.
In 2017, she becomes federal judge in the court of appeal, that of the seventh circuit, competent for the states of Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. His confirmation process in the Senate was then stormy: “Religious dogma lives noisily in you”, had criticized him in particular the Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein.
Already in 2018, Justice Barrett was one of Donald Trump’s favorites to replace Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. The siege finally returned to Brett Kavanaugh after a fierce political battle.
Her confirmation to the highest American judicial institution being recorded, the magistrate should be sworn in on Tuesday and participate in her first hearing on November 2, the day before the presidential election. It will therefore theoretically sit in the event of an examination of possible appeals against the results of the ballot. In 2000, the Supreme Court had to decide the outcome of the vote when it validated the election of George W. Bush against Al Gore despite the doubts that weighed on the counting of Florida’s votes.
