Pat Buchanan explains on his blog that Amy Coney Barrett’s ascension to the Supreme Court could end the “court wars” that have raged since the 1960s. He writes:
By nominating Federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Donald Trump kept his word, and more than that.
Should she be confirmed, he will have made history.
Even his enemies would have to concede that Trump triumphed where his Republican predecessors — even Ronald Reagan, who filled three court vacancies — fell short. Trump’s achievement — victory in the Supreme Court wars that have lasted for half a century — is a triumph that will affect the nation and the law for years, perhaps decades.
Trump’s remaking of the Supreme Court for constitutionalism may well be the crown jewel of his presidency.
Consider. If Judge Barrett becomes Justice Barrett, she will join Justices Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to create a constitutionalist core of five justices, a controlling majority.
On the other side would sit the three liberals: 82-year-old Stephen Breyer and Barack Obama appointees Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor.
If Chief Justice John Roberts envisioned a Roberts Court where he would be the swing vote for 4-4 deadlocks, deciding every such case himself, his dream could be about to vanish.
If Barrett is confirmed, the new court becomes “The Five,” with its youngest, newest and most charismatic member, a 48-year-old protege of Justice Antonin Scalia, its brightest and rising star.
Consider the credentials of the jurist Trump just named.
Barrett was summa cum laude at Notre Dame Law School, graduating first in her class. She clerked for Scalia, taught law at South Bend for 15 years and has served for three years on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
She is a non-Ivy League, Middle American and a devout Catholic and mother of seven, including a special needs child and two adopted children from Haiti. Almost universally, former classmates and colleagues, liberals among them, praise her temperament, brilliance and scholarship.
America’s court wars, in which the coming battle over Barrett’s nomination may prove decisive, go back half a century.
