Flawless, civil Amy Barrett erases doubts over whether she would be confirmed to Supreme Court

If there was any doubt that Judge Amy Barrett would be confirmed as the next US Supreme Court Justice, she erased it completely with a near flawless performance in her confirmation hearing.

The 48-year-old conservative Judge emerged unscathed from an all-day barrage of questions from Democrat Senators over her views on abortion, health care, gun laws and gay rights amongst other issues.

Throughout it all, Barrett kept her composure, was unfailingly polite and showed herself to be across an impressive level of detail on the law as she rebutted allegations that she would let her Catholic faith and personal beliefs influence her legal decisions.

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett departs following the second day of her confirmation hearing. Picture; AFP.

That is not to say she didn’t take some hits. Democrat vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris gave a cutting speech, rather than asking questions, about the threat she believes Barrett poses to Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act and the landmark Roe v Wade abortion law. It was Harris at her best and yet it also revealed a dark truth for the Democrats – they can only stomp their feet about their opposition to Barrett because they are powerless to control the outcome.

Barrett in effect stymied the Democrat attacks early on by making the sweeping claim that it would be wrong for her as a Judge to be a ‘legal pundit’ on previous Supreme Court decisions. She could not, she said, make informed comments on how she might vote in a certain case unless she knew the full context and the legal precedents.

In other words, she could not, and should not, meaningfully comment on hypothetical questions about how she might rule on cases involving Roe v Wade or the ACA, gun control or gay rights without knowing all the details.

She said she would always follow the law above all else, and would not seek to make policy or reflect her personal beliefs.

This was deeply frustrating to Democrats who understandably wanted to learn whether Barrett would pose a genuine threat to laws that enjoy majority American public support such as Obamacare and Roe v Wade.

But Barrett was able to defend her position by invoking the revered late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s approach during her own confirmation hearing that a nominee should give ‘no hints, no previews, no forecasts,’ on how they might rule – a position which Barrett said was now standard.

Barrett repeated ad nauseam that while she did take a conservative textualist approach to interpreting the constitution, she would not let her own pro-life and other personal views cloud her legal judgments.

Democrats have no choice but to take her at her word on this, but they were right to press Barrett hard on these key principles. If any court in the western world needs less politics, not more, it’s the US Supreme Court. Democrats were always going to vote against Barrett because they opposed the Republicans rushing through her nomination so close to the election when Republicans refused to consider Barack Obama’s nominee four years ago, nine months out from the 2016 election.

But despite Republicans and Democrats being at loggerheads over Barrett, the tenor of the second day of this hearing was direct but respectful given the sharp divergence of views. It was a far cry from the shameful circus that we saw in the confirmation hearing of Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.

Barrett is not the judge that liberal Americans want in the Supreme Court and her confirmation will make it harder to achieve liberal rulings from the court for a generation – a fact cheered by conservatives.

But Barrett has shown all sides of politics in these hearings that she can hold her own under fire with a level head while displaying a quality rarely seen in the US Senate these days – civility.

(Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia)