Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett says she doesn’t consider the Roe v. Wade decision that allowed abortion on demand a “super-precedent” that can’t be overturned.
Judge Barrett said Roe is not in same category as the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which declared segregated public schools unconstitutional because there is still a massive debate about whether Roe is legitimate.
Barrett says no one talks about overturning the Brown decision but explained that significant disagreement over it “indicates Roe doesn’t fall in that category.” She says it’s “not a case that’s universally accepted.”
“Well people use super precedent differently. The way that it’s used in the scholarship and the way that I was using it in the article the that you’re reading from was to define cases that are so well settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling and I’m answering a lot of questions about Roe, which I think indicates that Roe doesn’t fall in that category,” Barrett said.
“Scholars across the spectrum say that doesn’t mean Roe should be overruled, but descriptively, it does mean it’s not a case that everyone has accepted and doesn’t call for its overruling,” she continued.
“But that does not mean that Roe should be overturned,” Barrett told Senator Amy Klobuchar. “It just means that it doesn’t fall on the small handful of cases like Marbury v. Madison and Brown v. [The Board of Education] that no one questions anymore.”
SIGN THE PETITION: Vote to Confirm Supreme Court Nominee Amy Coney Barrett
Below are additional articles regarding today’s first day of hearings on Judge Barrett’s nomination.
Amy Coney Barrett: Justice Antonin Scalia is My “Mentor,” I’m an “Originalist” Like Him
Amy Coney Barrett Hints That Roe v. Wade Could be Overturned
