WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett presented her approach to the law as conservative and fair on Monday at the start of fast-tracked confirmation hearings, while angry Democrats, powerless to stop her, cast her as a threat to Americans’ health care coverage during the coronavirus pandemic.
With her husband and six of their seven children behind her in a hearing room off-limits to the public and altered for COVID-19 risks, Barrett delivered views at odds with the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose seat President Donald Trump nominated her to fill, likely before Election Day.
“Courts are not designed to solve every problem or right every wrong in our public life,” declared the 48-year-old federal appeals court judge, removing the protective mask she wore most of the day to read from a prepared statement.
Americans “deserve an independent Supreme Court that interprets our Constitution and laws as they are written,” Barrett told the Senate Judiciary Committee, laying out her judicial philosophy, which she has likened to that of her conservative mentor, the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
The Senate, led by Trump’s Republican allies, is pushing Barrett’s nomination to a quick vote before Election Day, Nov. 3, and ahead of the the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act, which the Supreme Court is to hear a week after the election.
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