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Abortion Assisted suicide Constitutionality Constitutionality

Senate Confirms Amy Coney Barrett

By a vote of 52-48, the US Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Barrett replaces Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who died on September 18, 2020.

Barrett adheres to the same judicial philosophy as Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom Barrett clerked in the late 1990s. As a result, most observers believe she will be far more willing to allow states to regulate and perhaps even prohibit abortion. Scalia rejected the Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade to create a constitutional right to abortion. Barrett was a member of the Notre Dame chapter of University Faculty for Life before she became a federal court of appeals judge in 2017.

In addition, it seems doubtful that Barrett will be receptive to arguments to create a constitutional right to assisted suicide. The Court rejected constitutional challenges to laws banning assisted suicide in 1997 in Washington v. Glucksberg, but some observers have speculated that the Court might willing to revisit Glucksberg. That now seems far less likely.

Richard Myers

Richard S. Myers, the Vice-President of UFL, is Professor of Law at Ave Maria School of Law, where he teaches Antitrust, Civil Procedure, Conflict of Laws, Constitutional Law, and Religious Freedom. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Kenyon College and earned his law degree at Notre Dame, where he won the law school's highest academic prize. He began his legal career by clerking for Judge John F. Kilkenny of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Professor Myers also worked for Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue in Washington, D.C. He taught at Case Western Reserve University School of Law and the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law before joining the Ave Maria faculty. He is a co-editor of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition: Contemporary Perspectives (Catholic University of American Press, 2004) and a co-editor of Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy (Scarecrow Press, 2007). He has also published extensively on constitutional law in law reviews and also testified before Congressional and state legislative hearings on life issues. Married to Mollie Murphy, who is also on the faculty at Ave Maria School of Law, they are the proud parents of six children - Michael, Patrick, Clare, Kathleen, Matthew, and Andrew. http://www.avemarialaw.edu/index.cfm?event=faculty.bio&pid=11705E7D4E0111010366