Amy Coney Barrett

To no one's surprise, Donald Trump named Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, bringing every liberal's nightmare to life, and to the glee of religious conservatives.

Barrett, a professor of law at Notre Dame, was named to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2017, was a finalist for the Supreme Court for the seat awarded to Brett Kavanaugh two years ago, and now hats been apped for the Supreme Court. I don't see anyway she will be stopped, and she is only 48 years old.

The hot button issue is her Catholicism, and whether it influences her judgements. She has said no, though she does believe in recusing herself from death penalty cases because of her religion. In my view, her religion is no one's business. Dianne Feinstein took a lot of heat from asking her about it at her last confirmation hearing, and I think rightly so. The Constitution clearly specifies that there is to be no religious test for the Court. She would be the seventh Catholic on the Court, but that's immaterial these days. There used to be a Jewish seat, and a Catholic seat, but quotas like these should be obsolete.

What she should be asked is how she regards precedent, that is respecting previous Court decisions. She is an originalist, that is believes the law should be judged in the context of what the framers wanted, which many on the left see as an excuse to render conservative opinions, avoiding the so-called "legislating from the bench." Of course, conservatives do that all the time, but they spin it differently. The most important statement she made in her comments after being nominated is that she was a clerk for Antonin Scalia, one of the great champions of originalism. What we will probably see, not to be reductive of her abilities, is that she will vote as Scalia would have.

Barrett has said she believes in precedent, such as Brown v. Board of Education, but the question that senators should be asking her is what makes a precedent sacrosanct? In her article about precedent she did not include Roe v. Wade for various reasons. She should be elaborating on that in the coming weeks.

The fear, and it is correct, is that abortion, LGBT rights, and the Affordable Care Act will be overturned or severely curtailed. But that is what we get when we elected this president. Elections have consequences.