JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/NOMINATIONS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The Senate Judiciary Committee approved four of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees on Thursday [9-14-17], amid a stir caused by a recent back-and-forth over the relationship between a nominee’s religious beliefs and her potential performance as a judge.
At a hearing last week, the committee heard from several nominees including Amy Barrett, a Notre Dame law professor whom Mr. Trump has nominated to the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Chicago.
A handful of Democrats, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), asked questions related to Ms. Barrett’s faith and whether she could separate her religious beliefs from her duty of impartiality as a judge.
Many of the questions stemmed from an article Ms. Barrett co-wrote two decades ago called ‘Catholic Judges in Capital Cases,’ exploring what a Catholic judge should do when faced with the prospect of presiding over a death penalty case, if the judge believed she was morally precluded from imposing a death sentence.
The authors wrote that recusal by the judge was the right response, though they said it might be difficult to determine exactly when it was appropriate.”
-Brent Kendall, “Senate Panel Backs Judicial Picks Amid Stir Over Religion,” The Wall Street Journal online, Sept. 14, 2017 07:01pm