This Is No Time for Lifetime Appointments to the Bench

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 30 – Following the cloture vote today for Amy Coney Barrett, a nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Alliance for Justice President Nan Aron released the following statement:

“Today’s cloture vote on Amy Coney Barrett, a nominee who will erode critical legal rights for many Americans, is the opening salvo in what Mitch McConnell intends to be a rapid-fire confirmation of federal judges this week. But we can’t say it forcefully enough: this is no time for this deeply compromised administration to be confirming judges to lifetime seats on the federal bench. Just this morning, with the arrest of a member of President Trump’s inner circle and the revelation of the guilty plea of another Trump campaign associate, the special counsel’s Russia probe has become a criminal case and is rapidly accelerating toward the development of a constitutional crisis for our country. The bottom line is this: Republicans are unable to legislate to achieve their agenda, so they are turning to court-packing to get it done. And at a moment when we simply cannot trust the motives of this administration at any level, we certainly shouldn’t trust Trump and his associates to appoint judges to our highest courts.”