What Amy Coney Barrett has in common with Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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Opinion by Kathleen Parker,
Knives are being sharpened and armies of Democratic operatives have saddled up to try and ride Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett out of town.
She’s also a Catholic, a near-apocalyptic thought to liberals fearful that a majority conservative court will overturn Roe v. Wade. If confirmed, Barrett would be the court’s sixth practicing Catholic…
Meanwhile, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s religion was central to her approach to the law, as she explained in an address to the American Jewish Committee in 1995, a couple of years after her appointment to the court: “I am a judge, born, raised and proud of being a Jew,” she said. “The demand for justice runs through the entirety of the Jewish tradition.”
Justice Ginsburg was many things, but above all she was an advocate for gender equality.
Barrett, during her remarks in the Rose Garden on Saturday, said she would “be mindful of who came before me,” a woman who “not only broke glass ceilings — she smashed them.”
With all the conversation about what the late justice wanted — her dying wish reportedly was that her replacement not be installed until after the next president is sworn in — it’s impossible to think she’d object to a sharp mind like Barrett’s joining the bench.
They surely would have disagreed on any number of issues — and probably become friends. Both the late justice and her likely replacement benefited from being easy to underestimate.
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