Amy Coney Barrett Says Judges Shouldn’t ‘Impose Their Will on the World’

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on Tuesday explained her judicial philosophy as an “originalist” and said it’s not a judge’s role to impose his or her “will on the world.”

Barrett, if confirmed, would replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg and become the first mother of school-age children to serve on the court. She has seven children.

Barrett was appearing before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee as it held its second day of hearings and began its questioning of her.

Her embrace of originalism – a judicial philosophy held by the late Antonin Scalia, a member of the conservative bloc and a hero of the Right – would be a dramatic departure from the liberal philosophy of Ginsburg. Explaining originalism and her view of the Constitution, she told senators, “I understand [the Constitution] to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it. That meaning doesn’t change over time and it’s not up to me to update it or infuse my own policy views into it.”

“Judges can’t just wake up one day and say, ‘I have an agenda. I like guns; I hate guns. I like abortion; I hate abortion’ – and walk in like a royal Queen and impose their will on the world,” Barrett said.

Barrett, 48, called Scalia a “mentor.” But Barrett – who clerked for Scalia – quickly added, “I want to be careful to say that if I’m confirmed, you would not be getting Justice…