The addition of Justice Barrett, at a time when the judicial system has grown increasingly conservative and pro-religion, could reshape the legal landscape for years.
— Nan Hunter, law professor at Georgetown University In Her Words is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. The U.S. Senate confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Monday in a 52-48 vote, with all but one Republican, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, voting in her favor — a decision that is likely to reshape the court for years to come. It was the first time in 151 years that a justice was confirmed without the support of a single member of the minority party, a sign of a bitterly partisan divide over judicial nominations. “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,” President Trump said on Monday at Justice Barrett’s unusual nighttime swearing-in ceremony on the White House lawn. Senate Democrats and civil rights groups condemned the confirmation, viewing the process that unfolded a week before the presidential election as a hypocritical power grab by the Republican Party, which denied President Barack Obama the opportunity to name a justice to the court nine months before the election in 2016. And they view Justice Barrett as a grave threat to a wide-ranging set of issues, noting that her track record, including her recent decision to reverse a verdict that awarded damages in a sexual assault case, her dissents to rulings that have invalidated anti-abortion laws and her opposition to contraceptive coverage in the Affordable Care Act, all reveal her conservative leanings. “A vote for Barrett is a vote to strip health care from millions of people; it’s a vote to turn back the clock on reproductive freedom,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said over the weekend. “To endanger Dreamers and immigrants. To let climate change rampage unchecked.
