Trump promises a woman to fill Supreme Court seat: Who are the frontrunners?

Liberal titan Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away due to complications from metastatic pancreas cancer at the age of 87 over the weekend

Credit: Samuel Corum /Getty Images North America 

The obituaries for Ruth Bader Ginsburg had barely gone to print before President Donald Trump announced his intentions to make his third Supreme Court Justice nominee a woman.

As the crowds at his rally in North Carolina chanted: “Fill that seat!”, two names emerged as front runners, as Mr Trump seeks to force through his nominee in record time prior to November’s presidential election.

Amy Coney Barrett

A 48 year-old law professor at Notre Dame University, Ms Coney Barrett is seen as the current front runner for the position. She is most notable for serving as clerk and protégé for the late conservative Justice Anthony Scalia.

Currently serving on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, based in Chicago, she was nominated to the Supreme Court in 2018 by President Trump to replace Anthony Kennedy following his resignation. That position was ultimately filled by Brett Kavanaugh, but a report from Axios quoted Trump saying he was “saving her for Ginsburg.”

U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett is the current favourite for the position

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Ms Coney Barrett, from New Orleans, is a devout Catholic. A mother of seven, she and her husband, Jesse M Barrett, have five biological children and adopted two from Haiti.

Some liberals have expressed concern that her Catholic faith could lead her to vote in favour of appealing Roe v Wade, removing federal safeguards for access to abortion.

While she has never written a legal opinion on the issue of abortion, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California commented during a 2017 confirmation hearing that “the dogma lives loudly in you.”

Ms Coney Barrett is a self-styled constitutional ‘originalist’, a legal school of thought which states that the US constitution should be interpreted as the founding fathers intended it to be at the time it was written.

She has written opinions favouring the rights of gun owners and supporting tough immigration policy. In June of this year, she wrote litigation favouring the ‘public charge’ rule, a Trump policy which denies legal permanent residency to certain immigrants deemed likely to require government assistance in the future.

Barbara Lagoa

A 52-year-old Cuban-American, Ms Lagoa was the first Hispanic woman to take up a position on Florida’s Supreme Court. However, this was not a position she held for very long, as just nine months later she was given a position on the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, based in Atlanta.

Ms Lagoa is seen as a very appealing candidate for President Trump as she has the potential to appeal not just to women but also Latinos in the crucial swing state of Florida. The sunshine state has never sent a Justice to the Supreme Court.

Barbara Lagoa is an attractive candidate for President Trump as she appeals to both women and the Latino community in the vital swing state of Florida

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Born in Miami, the mother of three grew up in the predominantly Cuban city of Hialeah. She graduated from Florida International University in 1989 and received her law degree from Columbia University in 1992.

Another devout Catholic, she too has yet to write an official opinion on abortion. However, in a letter she wrote to the Senate in 2019, she stated she would “faithfully apply… precedents” when it came to Roe v Wade. 

Nonetheless, conservatives see her as an ally on the issue, with Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who is one of her closest allies, saying she is “very pro-life, reliably pro-life.”

Of the 400 legal opinions she has written in her career, Ms Lagoa has repeatedly sided with businesses, according to the Washington Post. She helped to turn back a higher minimum wage in Miami, limited recourse for homeowners facing foreclosure, and reversed or rejected cases of employees who sued Caterpillar and Uber.

She is perhaps most famous for being one of the dozen pro bono lawyers who represented Elián González, a Cuban boy who was the subject of an international custody and immigration battle after his mother drowned trying to get him to Florida in 2000.