The US Senate has confirmed Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court in a victory for President Donald Trump a week before the presidential election.
Mr Trump's fellow Republicans voted 52-48 to approve the judge, overcoming the unified opposition of Democrats.
Her appointment seals for the foreseeable future a 6-3 conservative majority on the top US judicial body.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden called the move rushed and unprecedented.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said that by going ahead with the vote so close to the election the Republican majority was "lighting its credibility on fire".
Justice Barrett, 48, took the oath of office at the White House alongside President Trump.
Only one Republican, Senator Susan Collins, who faces a tough re-election battle in Maine, voted against the president's nominee in Monday evening's vote.
The new justice is the third appointed by the Republican president, after Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
Amy Coney Barrett | Find related content here
The federal appeals court judge from Indiana fills the vacancy left by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon who died last month.
What happened at the White House?
President Trump, just returned from campaigning in Pennsylvania, presided over Justice Barrett's swearing-in ceremony on Monday night.
Mr Trump said: "This is a momentous day for America, for the United States constitution and for the fair and impartial rule of law."
He added: "She is one of our nation's most brilliant legal scholars and she will make an outstanding justice on the highest court in our land."
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative, administered the oath of office to his new colleague.
Justice Barrett said afterwards: "A judge declares independence not only from the Congress and the president, but also from the private beliefs that might otherwise move her.
"The judicial oath captures the essence of the judicial duty: the rule of law must always control."
The ceremony took place on the south lawn of the executive mansion, a month after a similar event to unveil Justice Barrett as the president's nominee was linked to a Covid-19 outbreak that was followed by the president himself testing positive for the disease.
Who is Amy Coney Barrett?
- Favoured by social conservatives due to record on issues like abortion and gay marriage
- An originalist, which means interpreting US Constitution as authors intended, not moving with the time
- A devout Catholic, she lives in Indiana and has seven children, including two adopted from Haiti
What cases are coming up for Justice Barrett?
Justice Barrett could cast a decisive vote in a number of looming cases, including a Trump-backed challenge to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, on 10 November.
A previous ruling by Justice Barrett on Obamacare has alarmed advocates of the healthcare programme.
And her past writings on abortion have triggered liberal warnings that the 1973 Supreme Court decision which legalised abortion nationwide could be overruled.
Also coming up on the top court's docket are decisions on deadlines for accepting postal ballots in the critical presidential election states of North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Raising the stakes on Monday, the Supreme Court rejected a request to allow postal ballots received beyond election day in Wisconsin, another state through which the electoral road to the White House could lie.
How did Democrats react?
Mr Biden said the "rushed and unprecedented" appointment served as a "stark reminder to every American that your vote matters".
"While panicked and erratic in mishandling the pandemic, Donald Trump has been crystal clear on one thing for the past four years... he wants to tear down the Affordable Care Act in its entirety," he said.
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris said Justice Barrett's confirmation was "a disgrace, not only because of what she will do when she gets on the bench, but because of the entire process".
Democrats argued for weeks that it should be up to the winner of the 3 November election to pick the nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy.
But Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday: "We don't have any doubt, do we, that if the shoe was on the other foot, they'd be confirming. You can't win them all, and elections have consequences."
Democrats have threatened to retaliate by court-packing - which would entail expanding the number of justices on the nine-seat Supreme Court - if they win the White House and control of the Senate next week.
Mr Biden has refused to make clear whether he favours such a step, which could transform the third branch of US government. Mr Biden said last week he would appoint a bipartisan commission to study whether an overhaul of the judiciary was necessary.
On Monday night, the left-wing of his party called for the more radical move. "Expand the court," tweeted self-described democratic socialist New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The former Democratic leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, is meanwhile pressing Mr Biden, if Democrats are victorious next week, to go for the so-called nuclear option and scrap the filibuster, the decades-old practice of requiring 60 votes to advance legislation, allowing all bills instead to pass by a simple majority of 51.
When Democrats led the Senate, Mr Reid ended the filibuster for federal judicial nominees. Then, when Republicans took control, Mr McConnell went a step further by scrapping the procedure for Supreme Court nominees.
Source: bbc.com, Staff, October 27, 2020
Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation was shockingly hypocritical. But there may be a silver lining.
This is so unprincipled, so inconsistent and so cynical that it defies the imagination. It is the flip-flop of the century, undertaken by the Republicans for one reason: Barrett’s confirmation ensures a conservative majority on the high court for the foreseeable future.
But here is one good thing that could come of this shameful episode. With millions of people still casting their votes before Nov. 3, perhaps the Barrett confirmation will open Americans’ eyes, once and for all, and show them who they’re dealing with. Perhaps it will persuade them to reject the radical and hypocritical Senate Republicans at the polls.
Barrett’s confirmation, after all, is only one of many irresponsible moves by the Senate majority, led by the craven Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who long ago threw his lot in with President Trump. In recent years, he and his caucus have grown not just more extreme in their ideology but more unscrupulous in their tactics.
Not only did they refuse a hearing to Garland (giving that seat instead to Trump appointee Neil M. Gorsuch), but not long after, McConnell and his colleagues rammed Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination through without a comprehensive investigation of the sexual assault allegations against him.
The Senate majority also slow-walked the confirmation of lower court judges during the final years of the Obama administration — and then sped them up when Trump came into office.
The Senate majority ignored evidence, disregarded facts and refused to hear additional witnesses before acquitting Trump in a half-baked impeachment trial in February, thereby giving the imprimatur of the upper house to the president’s high crimes and misdemeanors.
Senate Republicans have refused to stand up to Trump as he politicized every part of the government from the post office to the census to the Justice Department, and even as he turned the conduct of American foreign policy to his own political ends.
And they did virtually nothing to stop further Russian interference in American elections.
Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has identified some of the factors that have driven congressional Republicans to the right over the years and encouraged their take-no-prisoners approach to politics. He cites the no-tax pledge promulgated by conservative activist Grover Norquist and the anti-Washington animus fostered by Newt Gingrich. There was the “Southern strategy” of Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater to win white votes in the Southern states.
And there’s been the slow but steady disappearance of liberal and moderate Republicans.
The GOP today is the anti-immigration party, the party of racial division and the party of Trump. It has squandered any reputation it may once have had for principled fiscal conservatism, presiding over costly and irresponsible tax cuts designed to win votes. It largely rejects bipartisanship, as we saw clearly during the Obama administration.
Democracy only works when rules and norms are in place. It only works when the parties compromise through a process of discussion, deliberation and voting.
Unquestionably, both political parties have made bad decisions over the years; both are susceptible to the tugs of partisanship. Democrats and Republicans alike have engaged in tit-for-tat tactics that make compromise more difficult.
For me, though, the turning point was the mistreatment of Merrick Garland. The Republicans flatly blocked an elected president from exercising his constitutional duty to name a new justice.
That was shocking enough. But now, with the Barrett confirmation, they’ve brazenly reversed their own logic, proclaiming their hypocrisy for the world to see.
That kind of disingenuous politics needs to be rejected.
Over time, the U.S. needs to rebuild a system that allows men and women of different parties, ideas and ideologies to work together in good faith to solve the serious problems facing the country.
Source: latimes.com, Opinion, Nick Golberg, October 27, 2020
🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.
 |  |
Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!
"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde