Judge Barrett

Greetings all,

The U.S. Senate is set to vote this Monday evening to, absent extraordinary citizen input to the contrary, confirm Judge Barrett for lifetime tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court.  If confirmed, she is likely to be on the Court for the likes of 20, 30, or even 40 years.  I hope every one of you will today or early tomorrow let your views be known to as many GOP senators as possible.  Contact info to each of them is of course readily available online. The following (after 3 short paragraphs) is an email/online letter I've submitted on the websites of the about 25 GOP senators whom I thought just MIGHT be amenable to consider. Please feel free to use any and all of it, making whatever changes you think appropriate. Yes, this is a long shot.  But the harms SCOTUS Justice Barrett would inflict on the body politic makes it a long shot we ought to take. As my grandma used to say, "Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition."

All best, Bill ___________________________________

Dear Senator ________: My wife and I appreciate your independent stance and your willingness to put principle above party. We are hoping that you will apply those virtues to President Trump's nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Our concern with respect to the Barrett nomination extends to both substance and procedure. Concerning substance, one must take note of the grave danger of approving a Supreme Court Justice who has dogmatically spoken out on at least two key issues -- both the ACA and Roe v. Wade-- that are very likely to come again before the Court. Grave danger?  Judge Barrett's confirmation would destroy any semblance of the Supreme Court's judicial neutrality.  Attempted adherence to that neutrality is essential for public acceptance of the Court's decisions.  THE LACK OF IT IS A RECIPE FOR CIVIL STRIFE. Moreover, the principle of judicial neutrality is crucial to the Constitution's system of checks and balances among our three branches of government. Judge Barrett's lack of neutrality?  Concerning the ACA, then-Professor Barrett wrote in 2017 that the Supreme Court's majority opinion by Chief Justice Roberts “pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute.” And concerning Roe v. Wade, though I am not "pro-abortion" I must note that then-Professor Barrett joined an anti-abortion-rights faculty group and added her name to a letter in the South Bend Tribune criticizing Roe’s “barbaric legacy.” In her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Barrett promised to uphold the rule of law and gave this assurance: “My personal views don’t have anything to do with the way I would decide cases.” Why is such assurance bogus at best?  Because most cases get to the Supreme Court because the applicable law is unclear. To say that a Justice's personal moral views would have no effect on how she would resolve legal uncertainties is as preposterous as it is intellectually dishonest. Procedural flaw? In their eagerness to confirm Judge Barrett's nomination just before the November election, most of your GOP Senate colleagues appear willing to cast their own prior principle -- solemnly invoked in refusing to even consider President Obama's nomination of Judge Garland months before the election -- to the wind. Were they to nullify their former sacred taboo against considering Court nominees "too close to a presidential election," your GOP colleagues would be stooping to a cynicism that makes Satan almost seem a saint. But I do remember Abraham's search for some righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah.  Perhaps there are four Republican senators who have not lost their sense of decency, their sense of shame, and their devotion to fair play.  And who will therefore vote against the whole Senate's considering Judge Barrett's nomination unless and until President Trump is re-elected. My wife and I hope that there are four such GOP senators.  And we are hoping, and praying, that you will be one of them. With profound respect, William G. Hollingsworth Professor Emeritus University of Tulsa https://billat80-plus.wixsite.com/website