Newest justice's links add to Indiana history

Amy Coney Barrett becomes the fifth-ever U.S. Supreme Court justice to have lived in Indiana.

Barrett, a federal appellate judge who lives in South Bend, is only the second justice to win Senate confirmation as an Indiana resident, according to Capitol & Washington, a Hoosier politics database.

Sherman Minton, a former Democratic U.S. senator residing in New Albany, was a justice from 1949 to 1956. Ex-Hoosiers on the Supreme Court have included Willis Van Devanter of Wyoming, a Marion native confirmed in 1911; former Bloomington resident Wiley Blount Rutledge of Iowa, confirmed in 1943; and current Chief Justice John Roberts, who grew up in Long Beach in LaPorte County and was confirmed as a Maryland resident in 2005.

Barrett is a New Orleans native who graduated in 1997 from the University of Notre Dame Law School. She has been a member of its faculty since 2002. 

Republican Indiana Sens. Todd Young and Mike Braun have been among her most ardent supporters in the Senate. Braun publicly called for President Donald Trump to nominate Barrett a week before he did on Sept. 26. 

“I think I was the first senator who came out for her” to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Braun said Monday in a telephone interview. “If we're not universally for someone of her credentials, that means that we've come a long, long way from what it used to be just a few years ago when so many of these nominations went through closer to unanimous than strictly on party lines.”

All 47 Democrats, plus Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, voted against confirming Barrett on Monday night, and 52 GOP senators voted in favor.

“Her record as a judge, as a law professor – everything that comes into play to get her to this point was nearly beyond reproach,” Braun said about Barrett, a judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

He said her confirmation hearings “quickly pivoted to how her rulings might impact policy, and I guess that's something you can bring up. But the whole point of being a judge is that you're not going to make policy while you're on the bench, and I think that is something that needs to be pointed out.”

Braun and Young introduced Barrett at her first confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Oct. 12. In a Senate floor speech on Monday broadcast by C-SPAN, Young said she “is clearly a brilliant jurist who interprets the Constitution as written and carefully weighs the facts of a given case.” He said that Barrett “has proven that she will make her decisions based on the law rather than politics.”

Young said that “it was abundantly clear that she was a star” when Trump nominated Barrett in 2017 to be an appellate judge. Young noted she was the first female judge from Indiana on the 7th Circuit Court and would be the fifth woman and first mother of school-aged children – Barrett has seven children, all age 19 or younger – to sit on the Supreme Court. 

“Hoosiers are extremely proud of Judge Amy Coney Barrett and the trail she has blazed for others. She is a role model for young women everywhere, including my young daughters,” Young said.

Braun said he planned to attend a White House swearing-in ceremony for Barrett on Monday after the confirmation vote. Young's office said he would not attend. At least 11 cases of coronavirus infections reportedly were linked to the ceremony in the White House Rose Garden at which Trump announced Barrett's nomination.

bfrancisco@jg.net