Why Everyone’s Talking About the New Justice

This story was updated on October 26.

The Senate has voted to confirm a new justice to the U.S. Supreme Court. Amy Coney Barrett, a federal judge from Indiana, will take her seat on the nation’s highest court immediately.

Coney Barrett is filling the vacancy created by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away in September at age 87. As one of the Court’s liberal members, Ginsburg was a champion of progressive causes.

Although many Americans, including former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrats’ nominee for president, said Ginsburg’s successor should have been chosen by the winner of November’s presidential election, many Republicans, including President Donald Trump, moved quickly to fill her seat. 

Coney Barrett is a conservative judge. Her presence on the Court will have a major impact on how the justices rule on cases they decide to hear. Here’s what you need to know about the nation’s top court—and its newest member.

The Supreme Court is made up of nine justices who decide whether laws are constitutional. The Court hears about 80 cases during its annual term, which lasts from October to June. The decisions it makes on those cases have a lasting impact on the nation’s laws.

Just as Americans today are starkly divided on many issues, with liberals and conservatives often disagreeing over how to address topics such as immigration and gay rights, the justices are divided as well. Justices serve for life, so where they stand on issues can affect the country for generations.

To ensure that no one branch of the federal government has too much power, both the president and Congress are involved in determining who becomes a justice (see sidebar, below).

First, the president nominates a person to fill an opening on the Court. Next, a Senate committee interviews the nominee during public hearings. (This can be a grueling process when Republicans and Democrats are sharply divided.) The committee then decides whether to send the nomination for a vote by the entire Senate. The nominee needs 51 Senate votes (a simple majority) to be confirmed. 

Before her confirmation, Coney Barrett was a judge on a high-ranking federal court in Indiana. At 48, she is the youngest justice currently on the Supreme Court and only the fifth woman ever to serve on the Court.

Coney Barrett is President Trump’s third Supreme Court nominee since he took office in 2017. Her confirmation to the Court expands its conservative majority to 6-to-3. That could result in years of conservative-leaning rulings on hotly contested issues.

The Court has several cases on the calendar for November, which the justices are scheduled to hear over the phone to maintain social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. These cases involve religious rights and healthcare—issues that liberal and conservative people in the U.S. often disagree on. How Coney Barrett and the other justices rule on these and other issues could affect the lives of all Americans.