(09-20-2020 07:17 AM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(09-19-2020 08:31 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(09-19-2020 08:00 PM)Rice93 Wrote:  

(09-19-2020 06:55 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  By “ biggest knock against her”, I meant from the people who would automatically vote to not confirm her (Democrats), using th excuse that as a devout, practicing Catholic, she would be likely to vote to overturn RVW. She answered those questions before, but as an excuse not to confirm her, it works for a lot of them.

I'm not that familiar with her. What did she say she would do?

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/poli...759076002/

Barrett said she stands by the article's core proposition, "which is that if there is ever a conflict between a judge's personal conviction and that judge's duty under the rule of law, that it is never, ever permissible for that judge to follow their personal convictions in the decisions of the case rather than what the law requires."

So... she’ll vote to repeal RvW or no? Your quote makes it seem that she just said that she will do what she is supposed to do if she is a Supreme Court Justice.

She said that she would apply the law.
(1) What else would you EXPECT a judge to do? If you expect something different, then you don't really want a judge; you want an autocrat.

(2) In this case, she CANNOT say much else, as it is legally spurious (ruling in the abstract without specific facts), procedurally unfair (declaring a result before the litigants have a chance to present their case), and ethically improper (expressly prohibited by the canons of judicial ethics) for a judge to pronounce an opinion in advance on a matter that is likely to come before the court. She ABSOLUTELY cannot say "I will/will not vote to overturn this decision." That's a pretty well-known constraint, so I'm kinda surprised you're asking.

(3) Her definitive promise to follow law over personal conviction is MUCH MORE than many current and former justices could say. Dred Scott and Griswold v. Connecticut are notorious examples in which justices have followed their personal convictions instead of the law -- with consequences that the country is still dealing with. (Those cases are also, not coincidentally, the philosophical and subject-matter forebears of Roe v. Wade.)

In short, the answer that Judge Barrett gave is exactly the right answer, and very much commends her as a judge. It's not clear how any reasonable person could find fault in it.