It's Sunday

At the top of President Trump’s list to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court is U.S. Circuit Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a jurist in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia who fulfills nearly all criteria on conservatives’ wish list.

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A devout Catholic who is fervently anti-abortion, Barrett appeals to Trump's conservative base.

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Trump considered Barrett in 2018 to replace retired justice Anthony Kennedy, but reportedly said he was saving her for Ginsburg's slot.

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Out of law school, she clerked for Scalia, who she considers a mentor and with whom she shares a belief in originalism, which is the idea that judges should attempt to interpret the words of the Constitution as the authors intended when they were written.

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During her confirmation hearing to the appeals court, Barrett said in that role she would "follow all Supreme Court precedent without fail" and would regard decisions such as Roe v Wade as binding precedent.

"I would never impose my own personal convictions upon the law," she added.

But Democrats pointed to comments she'd made at Notre Dame years before about being a "different kind of lawyer." She said that we should always remember that a "legal career is but a means to an end ... and that end is building the Kingdom of God."

She has previously written that judges shouldn't be held to upholding Supreme Court precedents, like Roe v Wade. In a 2018 Washington Post article that examined how Barrett's beliefs would affect her decision-making, experts who had studied her writings concluded that she would join other conservatives on the court in supporting overturning Roe v Wade.

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At 48 years old, Barrett could hold the lifetime seat for several decades. Trump’s first two nominees to the nation’s highest court, Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh, are in their 50s. Trump’s justices will potentially represent one-third of the Supreme Court for generations.

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