Opinion
Kamala Harris Should Grill Amy Coney Barrett
Senate Democrats would be wise to let Joe Biden’s
running mate lead their questioning at the nominee’s confirmation hearing.
By Cristian
Farias
Mr. Farias
is a journalist who covers legal affairs.
Millions of
Americans have already cast votes ahead of the election, and democracy demands
that one of the candidates on the ballot be the Democrats’ lead questioner at
the confirmation hearing for Amy Coney Barrett that begins Monday.
Kamala
Harris isn’t just a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Republicans
control and is rushing madly to ram through President Trump’s chosen
replacement for the Supreme Court seat formerly held by Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg. She is also one of the sharpest questioners on the committee, setting
herself apart in the nearly four years she has been in the Senate. She has
cross-examined everyone from Jeff Sessions to Brett Kavanaugh and William P.
Barr.
Voters
deserve a Senate hearing where a person aspiring to one of the nation’s highest
elected offices gets an opportunity to hold to account an unelected judge
nominated for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court. And a nominee whom
Mr. Trump is depending on to throw the election to him if it ends up in court,
and to give Republicans a generation of 6-to-3 decisions on contentious issues
they cannot win legislatively, because their ideas are so unpopular.
This is
about democracy. As Senator Harris herself observed during Wednesday’s
vice-presidential debate, Republicans’ brute-force effort to confirm Judge
Barrett as people head to the polls is an affront to voters. “We’re literally
in an election,” she said. “Over 4 million people have voted. People have been
in the process of voting now.”
Her running
mate, Joe Biden, who once led the Senate committee on which Ms. Harris sits,
echoed that sentiment on Thursday: “The election has begun. There’s never been
a court appointment once an election has begun.”
That was
precisely the Republican argument for denying Democrats a hearing for President
Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, in 2016. Senator Harris asking Judge Barrett
point-blank what she meant when she said that appointing Judge Garland would
“dramatically flip the balance of power” on the Supreme Court would expose this
hypocrisy — as well as Judge Barrett’s nakedly political assessment of the
Supreme Court’s membership.
There is
precedent in the Senate for a single woman, and a prosecutor at that, as
Senator Harris once was, to lead the questioning during a Supreme Court
confirmation hearing. Republicans set it in 2018, when they relied on what
Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, called “a female assistant” to
help them examine allegations that Justice Brett Kavanaugh had, as a teenager,
sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford.
Republicans
sidelined that woman, Rachel Mitchell, after her performance proved
ineffective. Senator Harris won’t have that problem, and the stakes are even
higher now. Senator McConnell and Senate Republicans are barreling ahead to
elevate Judge Barrett, all other legislative priorities be damned, including
Americans’ urgent need for economic relief from the toll of the coronavirus.
They’re under orders from Mr. Trump to prioritize her confirmation above all
else.
That says
as much about Republicans’ ambitions as Judge Barrett’s own. Senator Harris
would be well positioned to press the nominee about her role in this crazed
scramble to confirm.
For one,
the public needs an accounting of Judge Barrett’s apparent willingness to
expose herself, her family and many well-wishers to Covid-19 at the mostly
maskless Rose Garden event celebrating her nomination at which several
attendees, including Mr. Trump and his wife, may have contracted the disease.
Among those infected were senators, presidential advisers and the president of
the University of Notre Dame. Many of those who attended have since faced a
backlash and some have expressed remorse for their own carelessness.
Senator
Harris could easily lead a cross-examination that probes every detail of that
reckless ceremony, which the government’s top infectious diseases expert, Dr.
Anthony Fauci, labeled a “super spreader” event. Millions of Americans have
forfeited or canceled weddings, family celebrations, even the opportunity to
say goodbye to loved ones who succumbed to the virus. Does the judge feel any
sense of responsibility for reveling at this coronavirus hot spot? What does
she have to say to those people as she herself flouted guidelines that many
have observed for their own health and safety? Does it weigh on her conscience?
What does that say to the American public about her own judgment and prudence?
Surely
other Democrats have their own questions for the nominee about her record as
well — her views on Roe v. Wade, the Affordable Care Act and the scope of the
Second Amendment, all issues where the judge’s views are deeply conservative
and deserve a full airing.
She may
also take the pressure off people like Senator Dianne Feinstein, who many
Democrats believe botched Judge Barrett’s prior confirmation hearing for a seat
on the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and is ill-equipped to
question her again, especially on matters related to the judge’s Catholic
faith. As Senator Harris said during the debate with Mike Pence, “It’s
insulting to suggest that we’d knock anyone for their faith.”
For the
sake of democracy and the future of the Supreme Court, Senate Democrats would
be doing a favor to voters and the nation by yielding most or all of their time
to Senator Harris at Judge Barrett’s confirmation hearing.
Better yet
would be if the hearing did not happen at all. But in the face of Republican
intransigence, we all deserve a process where someone responsive to the
electorate demands answers from someone who never will be.
Cristian
Farias is a journalist who covers legal affairs.
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