The second day of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett produced numerous shining moments for the 48-year-old nominee and for some of the Republican members on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
These moments came despite bizarre questions from Democrat members on the Committee, including from Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI), who asked Barrett in front of her children if she has ever sexually assaulted someone.
Below are 6 of the top moments from yesterday’s hearings:
1. Barrett slams leftists who try to bring her adopted children into the mix for making political attacks.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) called extreme left-wing professor Ibram X. Kendi a “butthead professor” for calling Barrett a “white colonist” for adopting two black children from Haiti.
“Senator Kennedy, it was the risk of people saying things like that, which would be so hurtful to my family, that when I told Senator Graham this morning that my husband and I really had to weigh the cost of this, it was saying deeply offensive and hurtful things, things that are not only hurtful to me, but are hurtful to my children, who are my children, who we love, and who we brought into our home and made part of our family,” Barrett said. “And accusations like that are cruel.”
WATCH:
Sen. John Kennedy asks ACB about Boston University's @DrIbram saying that she is a "white colonist" for adopting two Haitian children:
"They are my children who we love and who we brought home and made part of our family and accusations like that are cruel." pic.twitter.com/tgrhUe2zM4
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) October 13, 2020
2. Barrett educates Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) on the issue of “super-precedents.”
Transcript:
KLOBUCHAR: Is Roe a super-precedent?
BARRETT: How would you define “super-precedent”?
KLOBUCHAR: I actually might have thought someday I’d be sitting in that chair. I’m not. I’m up here. So I’m asking you.
BARRETT: Okay, well, people use super-precedent differently.
KLOBUCHAR: Okay.
BARRETT: The way that it’s used in the scholarship and the way that I was using it in the article that you’re reading from was to define cases that are so well-settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling. And I’m answering a lot of questions about Roe, which I think indicates that Roe doesn’t fall in that category. And scholars across the spectrum say that doesn’t mean that Roe should be overruled. But descriptively, it does mean that it’s not a case that everyone has accepted and doesn’t call for its overruling. I don’t —
KLOBUCHAR: So here’s what’s interesting to me: You said that Brown [v. Board of Education] is … is a super-precedent. That’s something the Supreme Court has not even said, but you have said that. So if you say that, why won’t you say that about Roe v. Wade — a case that the court’s controlling opinion, in that Planned Parenthood v. Casey case, has described as a super-precedent? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.
BARRETT: Well, senator, I can just give you the same answer that I just did. I’m using a term in that article that is from the scholarly literature. It’s actually one that was developed by scholars who are, you know, certainly not conservative scholars — who take a more progressive approach to the Constitution. And again, you know, as Richard Fallon from Harvard said, Roe is not a super-precedent because calls for its overruling have never ceased. But that doesn’t mean that Roe should be overruled; it just means that it doesn’t fall on the small handful of cases like Marbury v. Madison and Brown v. the Board that no one questions anymore.
WATCH:
Pressed by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett says she doesn’t classify Roe v. Wade as a “super-precedent” that would never be overturned, but says “scholars across the spectrum say it doesn’t mean that Roe should be overruled.” https://t.co/4Oz3vYqxhc pic.twitter.com/0ieU83MWyh
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) October 13, 2020
3. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) pushes back on Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-RI) “dark money” rant by correctly noting that Democrat dark money groups outspend Republican dark money groups.
WATCH:
Sen. @tedcruz responds to Sen. Whitehouse:
"All of the great umbrage about the corporate interest are spending dark money is widely in conflict with the actual facts of the corporate interests that are spending dark money are funding the Democrats by a factor of 3-1 or greater." pic.twitter.com/MXNYx0Qfbz
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) October 13, 2020
4. Barrett explains her judicial philosophy.
Barrett made the remarks in response to being asked by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) why being a constitutional originalist was important.
“Because I think that both statues and the Constitution are law,” Barrett said. “They derive their democratic legitimacy from the fact that they have been enacted in the case of statutes by the people’s representatives, or in the case of the Constitution through the Constitution-making process and I, as a judge, have an obligation to respect and enforce only that law that the people themselves have embraced.”
“As I was saying earlier, it’s not the law of Amy, it’s the law of the American people,” Barrett continued. “And I think originalism and textualism, to me, boil down to that, to a commitment to the rule of law to not disturbing or changing or updating or adjusting in line with my own policy preferences what that law requires.”
WATCH:
Judge Barrett explains her judicial philosophy: “it’s not the law of Amy, it’s the law of the American people”https://t.co/5Dgkk08IEy pic.twitter.com/zxBY7C2Uaj
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 13, 2020
5. Barrett reveals that she did not rely on any notes for her answers, which was praised by many.
WATCH:
.@JohnCornyn highlights Judge Barrett’s impressive knowledge of the law https://t.co/z4JI4NWjoq pic.twitter.com/iAyJMrQu8W
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 13, 2020
6. Barrett notes that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has not identified himself as a textual originalist.
WATCH:
ACB with the most polite dunk on Justice Roberts pic.twitter.com/3JoPscR4Zu
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) October 13, 2020