A circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Amy Coney Barrett is one of the judges appointed to the United States Supreme Court. President Donald Trump who appointed Barrett to the Seventh Circuit in May 2017, appointed her to the United States Supreme Court on 26 September 2020. A former law professor at Notre Dame, Barret’s nomination to the US Supreme Court has received numerous criticism.
Here are the 10 things about Amy Coney Barrett.
Who is Amy Coney Barrett?
1. She comes from a family of law background.
Amy Coney Barrett was born to a father, Michael Coney, and a mother, Lida Coney. Her father worked as an attorney for Shell Oil Company. Her mother was a high school French teacher and homemaker.
2. She has 6 younger siblings.
Amy Coney Barrett has 6 younger siblings. She is the eldest child. She has 5 younger sisters and a younger brother.
Source: @washingtonpost
3. She graduated first in her class.
Amy Coney Barrett attended Notre Dame Law School. She received her Juris Doctor degree summa cum laude in law in 1997. She studied Notre Dame on a full-tuition scholarship and graduated first in her class.
4. She first worked as a law clerk.
After graduating from Notre Dame in 1977, she worked as a judicial law clerk. She first worked as a clerk for Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1997 to 1998. She then clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1998 to 1999.
5. She was a professor at her alma mater.
She was a professor at her alma mater. She taught federal courts, constitutional law, and statutory interpretation at Notre Dame. She was also a visiting associate professor and John M. Olin Fellow in Law at George Washington University Law School. She was also a visiting professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.
Source: @nypost
6. She is married to a law professor.
Amy Coney Barrett met Jesse M. Barrett at Notre Dame Law School. He is a law professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School. He is also a partner at SouthBank Legal-LaDue Curran & Kuehn LLC in South Bend, Indiana. He previously worked as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District for 13 years. They got married in 1999.
7. She has 2 Adopted Children.
Amy Coney Barrett and her husband Jesse Barrett has 7 children altogether. They have 5 biological children whereas two of their children are adopted from Haiti. The couple adopted their first child in 2005 and second child after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Their youngest biological child has Down syndrome.
Source: @dailymail
8. She Opposes Abortion.
Amy Coney Barrett personally opposes abortion. She signed an advertisement in 2006 that opposes abortion. The advertisement placed in a South Bend, Indiana newspaper by an anti-abortion group, St. Joseph County Right to Life read, “We, the following citizens of Michiana, oppose abortion on demand and defend the right to life from fertilization to natural death. Please continue to pray to end abortion.” She signed another advertisement against Roe v. Wade in 2013. The ad that appeared in Notre Dame’s student newspaper and described the decision as having “killed 55 million unborn children”. She also spoke at two anti-abortion events at Notre Dame in 2013.
She has never ruled directly on abortion, but she did vote to rehear a successful challenge to Indiana’s parental notification law in 2019.
9. She was questioned about her religious faith subjected to the death penalty.
After the US President Donald Trump nominated Barrett to the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in May 2017, her hearing was held on September 6, 2017. She was questioned about a law review article that she co-wrote in 1998 in which she had argued that Catholic judges should in some cases recuse themselves from death penalty cases due to their moral objections to the death penalty. She stated that she had participated in many death-penalty appeals while serving as a law clerk to Scalia, adding, “My personal church affiliation or my religious belief would not bear on the discharge of my duties as a judge”. She added, “It is never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge’s personal convictions, whether they arise from faith or anywhere else, on the law.”
Source: @wikipedia
10. She tested positive for COVID-19.
During the COVID-19 global pandemic, Amy Coney Barrett was one of many high profile personalities who tested positive for COVID-19. She recovered without any serious illness. As of early October, over 37 million people across the world contracted COVID-19 and over 1 million people died after contracting the virus. Over 7 million people in the United States alone contracted COVID-19 by early October 2020.
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