A mere 8 days before the 2020 presidential election, federal appellate judge and Notre Dame law professor, Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to a seat on the United States Supreme Court. She was confirmed by a vote of 52-48 and her confirmation now gives conservatives a 6-3 majority on the highest court.  

Barrett replaces the late justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and is a constitutional originalist and a member of the Federalist Society. She served as a clerk to the late justice Antonin Scolia and is the mother to 7 children–two of whom were adopted from Haiti. She is one of the youngest appointed justices in modern history at age 48 and touts a very illustrious resume, having graduated first in her class from Notre Dame law school. 

Barrett said, “If we are to protect our institutions, and protect the freedoms, and protect the rule of law that’s the basis for the society and the freedom that we all enjoy—if we want that for our children and our children’s children—then we need to participate in that work.”

Neil Gorsouch and Brett Kavenough, also appointed by President Trump, were both considered young for the lifetime appointment being 49 and 53 prospectively. The average life expectancy in the United States is 78.5 years old which means that many of Trump’s appointees could serve around 30 years or more. This could shape the court and its decisions for generations to come. 

Her appointment for Supreme Court is the third in just four years of Trump’s presidency, but her appointment particularly stands out because of its controversial nature. Her appointment and confirmation hearings all took place less than one month before the election and soon after the death of Ginsberg. Four year ago, with about 300 days to the 2016 general election, Senate Republicans blocked a vote on President Barack Obama’s Supreme court nominee, Merrick Garland, refusing to give him a hearing “…so close to the election.”   

Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer pointed out the hypocrisy of the situation. “Nearly every Republican in this chamber led by the majority leader four years ago refused to even consider the Supreme Court nomination of a Democratic president on the grounds…that we should wait until after the presidential election because the American people deserve a voice in the selection of their next justice,” he said.

Mitch Mcconnell, the Senate Majority leader, defended his actions in a press release saying, “Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year. By contrast, Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary. Once again, we will keep our promise.President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”

The press release from Mconnell was published only hours after the death of Ginsberg. 

With the confirmation taking place so close to the election, there have been concerns that a president and senate who do not represent the will of the American voting population have successfully pushed through the confirmation.

Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic Senator from Massachusetts, was one of the 48 individuals who voted against the confirmation of Barrett. She said, “They stole another Supreme Court seat just eight days before the end of the election, after tens of millions of Americans had already cast their ballots…The reason the Republicans were willing to break every rule to jam through an illegitimate nomination eight days before the election is that they have realized a truth that shakes them down to their core: The American people are not on their side.” 

Republican senators who voted for Barrett saw it as their duty to uphold their senatorial majority, regardless of how close the election was. Senator John Thune from South Dakota said, “I came to the Senate with the hope of putting judges like Amy Coney Barrett on the bench: thoughtful, intelligent men and women with a consummate command of the law and, most of all, with a clear understanding that the job of a judge is to interpret the law, not make the law.” 

83 million Americans have voted early in the 2020 general election, as of last Friday. Early mail-in-ballot numbers are also at an all time high. According to NPR, the total number of early voters for Texas and Hawaii as of Oct. 30 was higher than the entirety of all votes in those states for the 2016 general election. 

With the election results pending and many important court cases–some surrounding mail in ballots–to be heard in the month of November, Barrett’s roll could be vital for deciding whether or not to count late ballots in the final decision of the Presidential election.