Editorial: La. native now on Supreme Court
Published 6:26 pm Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Staff
Congratulations to native-born Louisianian Amy Coney Barrett on her elevation to the highest court in the nation, the United States Supreme Court.
Justice Barrett was nominated to the high court Sept. 26 by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate on Oct. 26. She was initially sworn in as the 103rd Associate Justice of the Supreme Court by Justice Clarence Thomas that same evening, and given the judicial oath by Chief Justice John Roberts the following day.
She was confirmed on a 52-48 vote by the Senate, with both Louisiana senators, John Kennedy and Bill Cassidy, enthusiastically voting for her confirmation.
Justice Barrett has deep roots in Louisiana. She was born Jan. 28, 1972, to Michael and Linda Barrett in New Orleans. Barrett is the oldest of seven children, with five sisters and one brother. Her father was an attorney for Shell Oil and her mother a French teacher and homemaker.
Of Irish and French ancestry, her Irish ancestors on her mother’s side came from Ballyconnell, County Cavan, Ireland. She also had great-great-grandparents who came to Louisiana from France.
Raised in a devoutly Catholic family, her father has been an ordained deacon since 1982. She was raised in Metairie and educated at St. Mary’s Dominican High School, an all-girls Roman Catholic high school where she was the vice president of the student body.
Justice Barret also attended Rhodes College and majored in English literature with a minor in French. Barrett graduated magna cum laude in 1994 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa and Phi Beta Kappa. Among her honors was being named the outstanding English department graduate.
The future Supreme Court justice was then admitted to the Notre Dame Law School in South Bend, Ind., on a full-tuition scholarship. There, she became an executive editor of the Notre Dame Law Review and graduated first in her class in 1997 with a Juris Doctorate degree summa cum laude.
Following her graduation, she served as a clerk for Judge Lawrence Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C., Circuit, and then for Associate Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court from 1998 to 1999.
Justice Barrett went on to an outstanding career in the legal profession in private practice and then teaching at George Washington University Law School and then at her alma mater, Notre Dame Law School beginning in 2002. She was nominated by President Trump to the Seventh District, U.S. Court of Appeals in 2017, and confirmed by the Senate.
In her personal life, she married fellow Notre Dam Law School graduate Jesse M. Barrett. The couple lived in South Bend, Ind., and has seven children, two of whom were adopted from Haiti. She is reported to be the first mother with school age children to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Justice Barrett is a devout Catholic active in her church.
Congratulations again to this Louisiana native who is certainly one of the most qualified members of the Supreme Court.
Associated Press
