[DAILYCALLER] “Stunningly, Barrett has asserted that judges should not follow the law or the Constitution when it conflicts with their personal religious beliefs,” AFJ claims. Legal academics have strongly disputed this characterization of her position.
Feinstein signaled sympathy with those concerns, and referenced a law review article that Barrett wrote in 1998 entitled “Catholic Judges in Capital Cases,” which appeared in the Marquette Law Review. Barrett concluded that a Catholic trial judge who is a conscientious objector to the death penalty should recuse himself if asked to enter an order of execution against a convict. She emphasized that the set of circumstances considered in the article were narrow, and that she participated in death penalty cases as a law clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court.
“When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the panel, of Barrett’s writings regarding the professional obligations of Catholic practitioners. |