What difference will Amy Coney Barrett make to American politics?

The appointment of Barrett to the Supreme Court seals for the foreseeable future a 6-3 conservative majority in the top US judicial body. Sean O’Grady considers Democrats’ fears and what Joe Biden could do to allay them if he is elected

Barrett is a proponent of the ‘originalist’ view of the US constitution (AP)

Now that Amy Coney Barrett has been appointed to the Supreme Court, what difference will she make?

Going by her past remarks and judgments, it seems likely that Barrett will be as reliably conservative as her predecessor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was generally liberal in outlook. This, in doctrinal terms, is exemplified in Barrett’s “originalist” view of the US constitution – the concept that it means now what it meant at the time, which for many parts goes back to the 18th and 19th centuries. That is an even more fundamentalist approach than the “constructionalism” of the past, which was to take the constitution at its word, without undue interpretation – still less, legal “activism”. So the new judge may be thought of as a social and legal conservative.  

That has distressed some liberals who fear, for example, the protection of gun ownership and a weakening of abortion rights. They also object to the violation of the convention that a justice should not be appointed so close to a presidential election.