Amy Coney Barrett Catholic leaders and academics have voiced their support following President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacant seat on the US Supreme Court.
Tributes to the Catholic judge and nominee followed Ms Barrett’s official presentation in the White House Rose Garden Saturday evening, after a week of speculation that she was the president’s choice.
Announcing the selection, Mr Trump called Ms Barrett “one of our nation’s most brilliant and gifted legal minds”, paying tribute to Ms Barrett as “a woman of unparalleled achievement, towering intellect, sterling credentials and unyielding loyalty to the constitution and “eminently qualified” for service on the nation’s highest court.
Graduate
Ms Barrett graduated from Rhodes College before receiving a full scholarship to Notre Dame Law School where she graduated first in her class.
Ms Barrett went on to clerk for Judge Laurence Silberman and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, before going into private practice. She returned to Notre Dame Law School and taught classes in 2002 before becoming a professor in 2010. She currently serves on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, a position to which President Trump nominated her in 2017.
Speaking after the nomination was announced, Notre Dame University president Fr John Jenkins, CSC, paid tribute to Ms Barrett, saying that “the same impressive intellect, character and temperament that made Judge Barrett a successful nominee for the US Court of Appeals will serve her and the nation equally well as a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court”.
“She is a person of the utmost integrity who, as a jurist, acts first and foremost in accordance with the law,” Fr Jenkins said.
During Ms Barrett’s 2017 nomination hearing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein questioned her on her personal faith and values, saying that “when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you. And that’s of concern”.
Criticism
In the past week, media criticism has focused on Ms Barrett’s Catholic Faith and the size of her family – she has seven children, including two children adopted from Haiti.
Speaking on Friday, ahead of the formal announcement of Ms Barrett’s nomination, Princeton University professor Robert P. George also noted the anti-Catholic tone of much of the criticism of Ms Barrett.
“I’ll give Amy Barrett’s opponents some good advice, in blissful assurance that they won’t take it,” Mr George said on Twitter.
“Don’t attack her faith. Don’t go near it. Stay a million miles away. Talk about health care, immigration, the weather, anything but religion. It’s not her Achilles heel; it’s yours.”