A ninth Justice

Published 10-01-2020

I, along with many other Americans, tuned in Saturday to watch President Trump name his third nominee to the Supreme Court after the death of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Not that there was much of a surprise for those that have been following Trump’s previous nominations.

Judge Barrett was one of the few names circulated as a top contender when now Justice Kavanaugh was nominated. More than a few court watchers opined that Barrett was being saved for this nomination, to replace RBG, rather than adding another female justice to the court, reasoning that Republicans replacing the “Notorious” Justice with a male justice would cause the left to lose their minds.

Honestly, any replacement named by Republicans, Trump or no, would have been vilified and othered. And after the Kavanaugh nomination process, and Democrats breaking every rule, precedent and shred of decency to win at any cost and destroy Justice Kavanaugh, the expectation of any kind of fair process for a Trump nominee flew out the window.

Growing up, I looked up to women like Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female justice on the Supreme Court. Seeing a measured, intelligent woman on the bench, surrounded by a sea of men was important for girls of all ages.

The fact that the Supreme Court didn’t even have a women’s restroom near the Supreme Court Chambers when Justice O’Connor was sworn in to hear cases is not lost on me. It also makes me laugh when young women today yell about perceived inequality of the sexes. Metaphorical barriers are much easier to create when the physical ones have already been busted.

Since then, three female justices have been nominated to the court, each as liberal as the last.

This is why a Justice Barrett is so dangerous.

It’s not about her identity, but the optics. A conservative female and mom that leads with the law rather than her uterus and partisan policy; that believes in her country, not fundamentally transformation via judicial fiat as an unelected super Legislative branch tweaking laws they don’t like.

I shouldn’t be surprised that the current line of attack against Judge Barrett centers around her Catholic faith, namely that she doesn’t disavow the church’s stance on cultural issues like abortion, the death penalty and gay marriage. Judge Barrett has never shown a willingness to allow her beliefs to color her rulings, in fact on numerous occasions she has promised, and shown, fidelity to the Constitution, not the Gospel, on the bench.

I look forward to the confirmation hearings when the “Party of Women” unleashes their vitriol against this singular woman... a mother of seven who is involved and active in her community, a scholar and former court clerk for Justice Scalia, with comparisons to a cultish following of dogma and subjugating women as second class citizens and handmaidens.

We should be thrilled that equality between the sexes means that both male and female Republican nominees can face equally horrid treatment from officials who demand the upmost respect because of their electoral victories.

Maybe this time the hearings can proceed without last minute disgusting and untruthful gang rape accusations.

At least we can hope, but I would put nothing past the Super PACs that dominate Supreme Court politics and Senate votes.

Maybe this nomination will bring some constitutional sense back to the court, and force Congress to actually take the hard votes, not leaving it to the courts to shake out and clarify. The framers never intended the Court to be involved in the day to day politics of our country, and resetting that will be the lasting legacy of this nomination.