California Senator Dianne Feinstein tried repeatedly this morning to get Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett to express her views on a number of hot-button issues, but the judge would not bite.
Feinstein was the first Senator to question Barrett in a marathon hearing that will continue until at least 6 p.m. and pressed her repeatedly on abortion.
“Do you agree with Justice Scalia’s view that Roe was wrongly decided?” asked Feinstein.
“Senator, I completely understand why you are asking the question. But again, I cannot pre-commit or say, 'yes I’m going in with some agenda' because I’m not. I don’t have any agenda, no agenda to try to overrule Casey. I have an agenda to stick to the rule of law and decide cases as they come,” Barrett replied.
Casey is a 1992 case that established that abortions could be restricted as long as policy changes did not create an “undue burden.”
Feinstein said that when she was a young woman at Stanford, many of her fellow students would travel to Mexico because they could not get an abortion in the United States, and said “it's distressing not to get a straight answer," on the issue.
Barrett cited the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Elena Kagan, who also declined to give their opinions on specific issues at their confirmation hearings.
“If I express a view on a precedent one way or another, whether I say I love it or I hate it, it signals to litigants that I might tilt one way or another in a pending case,” she explained.
Barrett did say later in the day that there may be certain aspects of Roe v. Wade that could be overruled and that unlike Brown v. Board of Education, the high court’s decision on abortion is not a “super-precedent” that cannot be touched.
She similarly parried questions on gun control, election integrity and marriage equality, refusing to commit to positions on potential cases.
But some viewers did notice her phrasing when answering a question on marriage quality, when the judge said she would not discriminate based on “sexual preference.” LGBTQ+ activists say the term is outdated as it implies that sexuality is a choice. The preferred term is “sexual orientation.”
Barrett insisted she has made no commitments to anyone, including the president, that she would rule in a specific way on any issue, referring to herself as independent.