"I'm saving it to [replace] Ruth Ginsburg."
This is what US President Donald Trump told his advisers about Amy Coney Barrett in 2018, the last time a Supreme Court position was vacated.
After the death, on September 18, of the highly respected dean of the highest American court, the name of this Court of Appeal judge quite naturally returned to the fore.
"Dogmatism lives in you deeply"
Since then, Donald Trump has done nothing to allay the fears of the Liberals who see Amy Coney Barrett as their worst nightmare.
She was also the first of the candidates for this post to be received, Monday, September 21, at the White House by the president, who had confirmed the day before his desire to appoint a woman to replace Ruth Ginsburg.
For the more conservative wing of the Republican Party, the possible arrival of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court would be the crowning achievement of the long work of reshaping the judiciary under the Trump era.
This 48-year-old woman ticks all the boxes of the right wing of the Conservatives.
His legal CV is unassailable.
She is one of the most respected graduates of the prestigious Notre Dame Law University, Indiana, where she has been named "teacher of the year" three times since 2014. Prior to that, she had worked for some some of the country's most famous conservative jurists and judges, such as Antonin Scalia, who was the dean of the US Supreme Court.
Since joining the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals (with jurisdiction over Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin) in 2017, she has also garnered the respect of her peers.
They recognize in him his perfect mastery of the mysteries of law and his ability to stay in the legal nails without denying anything, however, of his deep religious and conservative convictions, recalls the ScotusBlog, a site covering the news of the American Supreme Court.
But beyond her impeccable legal pedigree, it is above all Amy Coney Barrett, the fervent Catholic, that the ultrareligious American circles want to see succeed Ruth Ginsburg.
She has become the darling of this very important electorate in the eyes of Donald Trump.
Her political baptism as a muse of the religious right dates back to 2017, during her hearing for the post of appeal judge, which she still occupies.
Democrats, who did not want her because of her too anti-abortion profile, then criticized her violently, blaming her for "a personal story suggesting that she would make her religious beliefs prevail over everything else".
California senator Diane Feinstein even added: "[religious] dogmatism lives in you deeply."
A statement which made Amy Coney Barrett, for the most religious Americans, the victim par excellence of the “anti-religious bigotry” of the American liberals.
T-shirts and mugs adorned with this phrase had even been made and sold, tells the New York Time.
"Handsmaid's Tale"
It must be said that she has her faith pegged to the body.
The one who, with her husband, raises seven children, two of whom were adopted in Haiti, carries high the family values so dear to this segment of the population.
She is actively involved in community life in her hometown of South Bend, where she regularly attends home football games.
It is also linked to a religious group with a sulphurous reputation, called the People of Praise.
Amy Coney Barrett has never confirmed being a member of this Catholic community, but her father and her husband's were senior executives, The New York Times has revealed.
This group, described as sectarian by some, applies principles of life which are not unlike those depicted in the dystopian work "The Handmaid's Tale" (The Handmaid's Tale).
As in the series, members must swear obedience to the community, and each is assigned a guardian.
These guides have a vast influence on the life of their disciple, since they have a say in their romantic relationships, their choice of career, the place of residence or even the decision to buy or not a property, says the New York Times.
Amy Coney Barrett's closeness to this community has become a favored angle of attack for Democrats since she has been among the serious candidates for a post at the Supreme Court.
"Of course, this kind of group can sometimes be so invasive that it becomes difficult for a member to maintain his independence of mind," summarizes Sarah Barringer Gordon, professor of American legal history at the University of Pennsylvania. , interviewed by the New York Times.
Unravel the right to abortion?
The religious right will probably pass the sponge on these links with a group at least eccentric as long as its political agenda is defended in the Supreme Court by their champion.
Starting with the thorny issue of the right to abortion.
And Amy Coney Barrett never concealed that she was hostile to it.
"Her voice, as a woman, will surely have more weight in matters than that of a man," said the Wall Street Journal.
But during her legal career, she always said that she would respect the precedents of the Supreme Court in this matter.
In other words, she does not intend to call into question the very principle of the right to abortion if she becomes a judge on the Supreme Court.
But it could help unravel it.
She has, in fact, written opinions differing from certain judgments in favor of the right to abortion, which indicates her conviction that states have a certain latitude to restrict recourse to this operation, recalls the Scotusblog.
She is also very attached to another Conservative hobbyhorse: the right to own a gun.
Amy Coney Barrett is what in the United States is called an "originalist", meaning that she interprets the Constitution according to what she believes to be the will of the Founding Fathers.
She applied this doctrine in one case in 2019 that won her praise from the gun lobby.
She then dissociated herself from the rest of the Court of Appeal which had ruled that a man with a criminal record was not allowed to possess a weapon.
For Amy Coney Barrette, while the authors of the Constitution certainly did not want to leave a gun in the hands of a "dangerous" man, a criminal record did not automatically mean that the person was dangerous with a weapon.
Amy Coney Barrett therefore has all the qualities to "move the lines of the cultural battle", enthuses The Federalist, a conservative site which campaigns for her candidacy.
But there is also a big catch which, in this period of electoral campaign, could be fatal to him.
His assets in the eyes of the evangelists could become handicaps for the more moderate voters that Donald Trump will need if he wants to hope to be reelected.
If she was named, "we would only talk about abortion until the election, which would galvanize the Democrats and prevent us from being audible to voters less sensitive to this issue," fears a member of the Republican Party who preferred to remain anonymous, interviewed by the Washington Post.
The choice for Donald Trump therefore risks being difficult: to realize the dream of his electoral base by leaning the Supreme Court to the right for a long time thanks to a candidate of only 48 years, or to choose a less controversial judge to improve his chances of re-election .
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