as a public service. "washington journal" continues. oft: this is carrie severino the judicial crisis network.

she's here to talk about the upcoming supreme court confirmation involving judge amy coney barrett. thanks for being with us. guest: good morning. host: remind our viewers about the organization and where you stand politically. guest: we are looking to get judges confirmed to our committed to interpreting the constitution and the laws as they are written. you have any active role in the president's choice for supreme court? guest: that's the president's call and it is done through the white house counsel office but i'm thrilled, i felt like everyone he was looking at closely was really well-qualified. i felt like i couldn't be in a better position. i would have been happy if it was amy coney barrett or barbara lagoa, he had some great choices. host: i suppose the question you are asked a lot these days is about the overall impact on the court and how it changes when it

comes to the justices themselves. how would you answer that? guest: it's a shift in perspective and how we look at the law versus ruth bader ginsburg. in herey barrett follows footsteps as a woman, a woman with children, accomplishing what she has as a scholar and a judge. but she also has a different perspective in terms of how to interpret the constitution, much like ginsberg's judge -- good friend, justice scalia. she talked about looking at the text of the law and really interpreting the text as written and leaving changes to the text to the legislature. we have seen and heard her role now is a federal judge, she's been very articulate about that and careful to look at what the constitution says. we don't interpret them as we wish they were or feel like they should be updated.

we look at the words as they were understood when they were passed. either parts of the initial constitution or later amendments . you have to look at them as they were meant to the people that passed them and if you want to make changes, that's what the amendment process is for. host: it's been reported that your agency is spending quite a bit of money in this effort. how much? spent demanded justice $10 million on the fight to oppose barrett so we said match you, we will spend the same amount to defend her. 4 -- host: so, $10 million? guest: that's our budget for the first month of the process. host: one of the ads that you will have supporting the candidate, we will show the viewers the ad and then we will come back to ask about it. guest: sure. [video clip] >> you will hear a lot about amy coney barrett. here it from her.

decideare not there to cases as you may prefer. you are there to do your duty and follow the law where it may take you. themy coney barrett follows law and ignores politics. incholar and judge grounded faith and family, she's the perfect choice to follow justice ginsburg. host: can i ask you about the final line, the perfect choice to follow justice ginsberg, what do you mean by that? guest: i think she's going to be an excellent judge, as i said before. you heard it in her own statement, and her nomination, she embodies so many of the that people admire about justice ginsburg. she's a mother. she's a person of faith. she has a wonderful partnership with her husband, down to the fact that it seems like marty ginsburg, justice ginsburg's husband and jesse barrett are

known as the best cook in the family, something the supreme court helped to kick off, that supreme court cookbook in his honor. there's a lot of ways in which these women are similar. also in their commitment to being friendly and cordial with people they disagree with. that is why you have people, there's that famous ginsberg scalia relationship, such good friends in the court, even though they differed. barrett, same thing, colleagues that span the spectrum, the people she clerked with saying that she is someone who ought to be in the art, she's super brilliant. people like noah feldman said that he disagrees with her on so many things but that she should be confirmed to the court. this is the kind of role model that ginsberg was in forging those kinds of relationships and barrett has a similar path herself. host: here is how you can ask our questions -- our guest questions.

the line for democrats, (202) 748-8000. the line for republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. you can text or tweet us, if you wish. there has been a lot said about the writing of the judge when it comes to a couple of different areas. much was made about what she said about the affordable care act. this was a book review in 2017 chiefthe act, saying that justice roberts pushed the affordable care act beyond its plausibility in the statute. "deference to a democratic majority should not supersede the duty of a judge to provide clear text is there still concern over the aca your mind? bit ofsome of this is a scaremongering about the aca. what bear say is that first of all, this article has been out there since before she was confirmed to the court.

there wasn't a lot of questioning about it before. this is something democrats are going back to try to find anything they can, even articles she's written, not cases she has decided. the bottom line here is she is committed to looking at the law as it is written and the interpretation the chief justice put on it, from the perspective of a lot of people, it was driven more about his concern over policy outcome. she's not telegraphing how she would rule on a future case or a later case that had different approaches in terms of legal philosophy. but i think she's really clear that looking at those outsized concerns is not the correct thing. it's looking at the text of the law. and that resulted on the bench with her coming up with conservative and what people might politically call conservative or liberal decisions. they are ultimately driven by the law rather than politics and that's what she's getting at.

host: a lot of people pointing to what she wrote on roe v. wade , "public rejection of the proposition of starry decisive's rather than a desire to precedent it remaining unchanged host: i'm not a lawyer, many of our viewers are not lawyers, but what does it mean when it comes to the topic? starry guest: -- guest: , following a case because you followed it before, not because you agree. there is no justice who has ever said that every single case we have to follow. all of them, justice ginsburg, kagan, sotomayor, breyer included have said that in

certain cases we need to overrule this case because it is so wrong. there is a set of balancing attempts that the judges will apply in terms of how wrong. i don't think that what she said is particularly surprising. it's different from what any justice would do. what differs is how those balancing tests get applied and which cases the justices would feel like are the ones that are wrongly decided. joiningrrie severino us. from maine, joe, biddeford, you are on with our guest. good morning. good morning, pedro. i guess my question is in two parts. the president said that judge ginsburg did not say on her deathbed that we should wait. that we should not make it political and we should wait until after the election. do you agree with that? yes or no. my second question is this.

if she's such a perfect replacement for judge ginsberg. , why isn't she honoring her deathbed request? i'm -- i will keep talking if you want, but i'm sure pedro will cut me off. host: you asked the question, let her respond. guest: her granddaughter said she said that. she said don't wait until the election, she said wait until the next president is installed. theoretically of trump is installed, i could before years of him. i understand that is her deathbed wish, but that doesn't determine the way the future vacancy is necessarily handled. to wait for example for four more years to fill the vacancy, everyone agrees would be extreme. although you can understand, a lot of justices have felt this way. they would like their successor to be chosen by someone, president of their same party.

nonetheless they all recognize that practically speaking that's generally not your choice to have and that's the precedent we will be following as well. host: i suppose when you say things like that the two words the pop to mind are merrick garland. guest: well, no, if justice had had a deathbed wish, i can guarantee you it would not have been followed by obama. he would have been happy with gorsuch. but that's not the reason that we hold a seat open. the question of merrick garland i think is one of looking at, even just the historical precedent of how the election-year vacancies are handled. thathing that we know is every election year vacancy and history of the country, when there is a vacancy, the president nominates someone to fill it. we are in line with precedent there. when the senate and the white house are held by two different

parties, the precedent historically is the person doesn't get confirmed. it's not surprising. we have a constitutional check on the appointment process that says the senate has to be able to ratify this and if the senate doesn't want the person, because they disagree with the president, they won't get confirmed. the vast majority of the time, like in 2016 when they were in different parties, the nominee doesn't get confirmed. we were in line with historical precedent there. 2020, the opposite occurred. the president in the white house holding the same party. if you look historically almost every single time they were confirmed under situations like that. and it's not surprising why. the political check and balance tilts into the cot to touche in a process here works by saying ok, the american people gained control of the senate, the same party as the white house, meaning we are moving forward on things like that and that's what we will see in 2020. host: here is san diego,

california, democratic line, cynthia, go ahead. she pretty much answer the question. i wanted to find out why merrick garland wasn't confirmed during the presidential, when the president obama was in office. and now we have trump. do the right thing. it's all about integrity. with this president we don't have that and i just think it's very unfair. host: cynthia, thinks for the call. you can answer to that if you wish. guest: i recognize that there are people who disagree with this president. nonetheless, he has president has the authority to fill that seat. this is exactly where we are with historical precedent. i will point out that the democrats in 20 were making

arguments going to the extent that it's unconstitutional not to hold hearings and vote for the nominee. those arguments were false at the time and they knew that they were false because the same people who said it was unconstitutional suddenly and 2020 are saying no, you have to have -- you have to wait for the election. that's, you know, i think that's the real double standard here. the fact that there is a political check and unfortunately, the democrats don't like the results of the check, i'm sorry, that may mean that you are frustrated with the system and the solution to that is in order to have nominees move through, you need to have control of both the senate and the white house and that it has historically always been the case, because the constitution created that political system for getting supreme court nominees confirmed. host: from james on the republican line, brooklyn, new york, you are on with carrie severino.

my question is, how do you feel that the confirmation hearings are going to turn out? guest: in hawaii? you are up early, i'm impressed. ,e are going to see it here hopefully a little different from the kavanaugh hearing. that was really marked by a lot of chaos and intentional disruption by people in the audience, over 200 people arrested for disrupting the hearing, they had to be taken out of the room. this year because of covid-19, hearings don't have the public seats. i think on a positive note, that means that distraction and that level of delay of the process is going to be taken out of the picture. it will be senators on both sides questioning the nominee. what can we expect?

some of the things that were hallmarks of previous hearings. her record. you will have some people on both sides of the aisle who are going to want her to commit to how she would vote in certain cases. but that's something that many people get frustrated by but it's simply a fact of the process here, were not going to get her to say well, i would vote this way or other. the reason for that comes right from justice ginsburg, she wasn't the first person to have this approach but she was clear, no hints, nor forecast, no previews. she pointed to the ethical obligations of a judge under the federal rules saying that you can't guarantee that you would vote in a certain way. if she had she would have had to recuse herself later from those cases. ginsbergduring the confirmation process she said she can't answer the question, can't talk about these things. every time it's frustrating for people but i want to always say you know it's the case, we have

been talking about this for years. you cannot ask for commitments on cases. one other area that we are looking forward to seeing how it plays out is whether the senators will attack her on her faith. we have even seen some people, some democratic strategists on twitter suggesting they should attack her adoption, two children adopted from haiti, attacker either because there is something illegitimate there or because it's inherently illegitimate to adopt a child of another race. those are be mistakes on the parts of the democrats. we did see in her confirmation process to the appellate court senator dianne feinstein, who really did attacker on her faith, asked her if she was orthodox catholic, said that the dogma -- people scratched her head, wondering where she was going. there is no religious test for office. they make -- there may be people going that way with moderate

democrat saying that would be a horrible mistake but some people on the left saying nothing south the table. you know i think that will be the big mystery. will we see personal attacks like that? again, we obviously saw some of that going on against kavanaugh. so that, instead of having people arrested, that might be the drama for the hearings this time. host: do you think that there will be questions about the association with the group people of praise as a part of the process? guest: that's what we are already seeing, my goodness, this group -- many of these things are shared by large numbers of christians but also other religions in the country. i think it's a bad look and i think again, there's a constitutional standard here that we cannot ignore. there cannot be religious tests for office. you may not agree with her religion, but you have to respect it. justice ginsburg herself said that her religion informed her

public service and it's why she went into the law. because of her commitment to justice and her jewish faith that taught her the importance of seeking justice. that is something we should celebrate, having a strong faith life isn't something that we should be suspicious of or questioning. it certainly not something that fits into the ginsberg legacy. this from twitter, janet makes the comment that she's been a judge for less than three years and adds that her lack of courtroom experience is glaring. she has more experience than three of the sitting members of the supreme court. justice kagan had zero experience as a judge. justice thomas and justice roberts, they had less experience as a judge when they came onto the court. i think that's something where there's a lot of debate as to whether -- president obama said maybe we should have more politicians like chief justice earl warren, who had no

experience as a judge before coming on the court. there are many illustrious judges in the history of this country who had that. there's a lot of people who say -- look at her record. she actually has a much longer judicial record than many of these people. you can see her approach. and you can see it in her scholarship as she wrote clearly about the way judges should behave, she has clearly thought through these things deeply. if you look at her record, it's going to be that she has a lot of these amazing -- i mean her brilliance is one just shine through. -- is going to shine through. california, democrats line, you are next up. go ahead. good morning, c-span. our system of checks and balances has been broken for a long time and i do believe that the next president should be the

one that chooses the next appointment or makes the next appointment on the supreme court. i also want to rely -- remind allowat mcconnell did not obama's picks for the court to go through and the system was broken. that's why harry reid invoke the nuclear option. that was a mistake, because now we are paying the price for. let's be clear, it does matter who sits on the supreme court and it should be chosen by the american people and the american people put the next president office. i want to ask you, are you part of the federalist group? thank you. guest: yeah, i am a member of the federalist society. most conservative libertarian lawyers in the country would say the same thing. it's a great debate group and an opportunity to speak. i have spoken at their events and had interesting exchanges

with the people i have debated their. going back to the question of the confirmation process and how that works with the checks and balances, here's how i would kind of illustrate it. when president obama took office, right? he had two supreme court nominations before the scalia vacancy and merrick garland. those nominations went through, right? in part because part of that time he actually controlled, his party controlled the senate. in 2014 the american people instead of reelecting democrats in the senate, they elected republican senators and shifted the balance of power. when the american people do that, it's tapping the brakes on the country. it's not saying for steam ahead, we like what's going on. it's a step back, let's have a pause. that's how the checks and balance works. elections absolutely have consequences and that includes elections to the senate.

that's why the constitution set it up that way, they thought the senators had a real role in the process. when you had all the ties between the senate and the white house, this is what happened overwhelmingly, historically in these cases, the american people are the deciding vote and they get the tiebreaker and in that case they cast it for donald trump. in this case what we saw in 2018, same kind of midterm elections for the republicans, they didn't lose seats, they gain seats in the senate and many people, democrats as well, pointed to the cavanaugh confirmation is the reason they did that. when americans saw what was going on in that process they were horrified and frustrated and it shifted the election toward the republicans. i would say that the 2018 election was the another -- was another opportunity where the american people said to be like this direction and my goodness, the republicans won more seats because people were frustrated

with the way the democratic party was handling judges in particular. that's an indication of moving forward in the same direction. that's what we are going to see in 2020. as anin her first year appeals court judge, the federalist -- federalist society paid for her to travel to colleges. is that a common practice? how would you respond? guest: when i had to travel to go to an event, they reimbursed me for my travel costs. i have had that experience with liberal groups i have spoken at. the idea of paying someone's airfare to get to an event they are speaking at is pretty .ypical supreme court justices regularly go to speak at events. even in europe. their expenses are paid by the organizations that bring them there. pensacola, florida.

independent line, hello. guest: are they trying to do with abortion only but also the reproduction rights for the women? -- caller: are they trying to do with abortion rights only or also reproductive rights for women? guest: this is an example of scaremongering. barrett hasn't expressed her opinion on the validity of roe v. wade itself as precedent and i don't know that we see that going anywhere anytime soon, in my personal opinion. however i think the big commitment that she has is to read the constitution and the text of the law as written. this isn't about your personal views on these different hot button issues and it shouldn't be. we shouldn't want to know or the personal views of these justices.

we should be concerned about whether they are following the law, whether it goes in the direction they agree with or a direction they disagree with. she's been very clear that that is her approach on the bench. you can see it in some of the cases she has heard. she has heard cases where if you look at the politics of the way that a thing comes out, she comes out for example against the trump administration in their interpretation of something and you go gosh, politically why would you do that. because it isn't a political question. it's because it's a legal question. if it is consistent with the law, she will follow it. if it's inconsistent with the law, she will follow it there as well. robert, good morning. caller: how you doing, thank you for it call. but i have to say is plain and simple. president trump is a republican and he made a nominee for the supreme court. there's not a democrat alive who

becausee for her democrats don't vote for what republicans do end republicans don't do vote for what democrats want to do. that's the problem we have. host: ok. that shewill point out was confirmed by a bipartisan majority. several of those democrats voted her to the second circuit. i'm optimistic that we will see people like joe mansion, who also voted for justice kavanaugh , voting for her. honestly, i think, and this is why i'm looking forward to the hearings, i think that once people get to see her and understand her perspective, seeing what a poised articulate woman she is, i think it will be hard for democrats not to acknowledge that this is someone who is incredibly qualified for the seat, who clearly knows her stuff. you have got her colleagues saying gosh she was ready for

the supreme court 20 years ago. she's whip smart. but she's also understanding, she won't come at it like scalia, where he's acerbic and sarcastic. i think she will be someone who once they get to know her, it will be hard for these democrats to vote against her. i think we will see a bipartisan confirmation process. that's what justice ginsburg would have wanted. you heard her say it during the cavanaugh confirmation. she said that the way it is is not good. the way it was was better, referring to her own confirmation process when she was confirmed despite being a clear liberal. having worked for the aclu, she was nearly unanimously confirmed in a very swift confirmation process. she thought the process should be that way again. i do think we will see some barrett'srecognizing

outstanding qualifications and will go and vote for her, though i think you are right, they will probably get really attacked by the groups on the left to feel like take host:announcer: washington jourl continues. host: another perspective from elizabeth of the constitutional account ability center, she serves as the president, good morning to you. guest: good morning. host: a little bit about your organization, please. guest: we are a public interest law firm that works in the courts, with congress, and talks to the public about the promises of the constitution, and you can check us out at our website. host: from the perspective you take, when you consider someone like amy coney barrett constantly -- possibly going to the supreme court, what are the