And questions, i think there was at least an implication from what was just said that you would not be sensitive to their need for equal justice for all under the law. , for all peoples in america. Would you like to respond to that at all before i go ahead . Judge barrett i am fully committed to equal justice under the law for all persons. I am fully committed to enforcing all laws to limit Racial Discrimination. In my private life, i bore Racial Discrimination and for both personal reasons and professional reasons want to ensure that there is equal justice for all. And all of my children i think have made an escape but if they washed this one day i would want all of them to know and especially and john peter, i condemn racism and want to do everything that i can in my own capacity personally and as a judge to end it. Sen. Crapo thank you. I appreciate you making that point. Afind it just incredible that mother of children of different races could be accused of not being sensitive, nor willing to protect the rights of all under the constitution. Before i go on with my questions, once again, as happened both two days ago and yesterday and again today, there are couple things i need to be set straight in the record. First of all, once again today, it was said that we should not be holding these proceedings because we should be dealing with the pandemic. Senateirst of all, the can do more than one thing at one time. Secondly, as i indicated before, billionput over a 500 package overleaf dealing with most every important and significant aspect of our need for Covid Response on the floor. It has been filibustered by the other side. The president has made an even larger offer back, that has been flatly rejected. And we have had an announcement recently by the leader of the senate, mitch mcconnell, that we will vote again next week on the issue to see if there some way we can get an agreement to move forward. But the argument that we should simply ignore this important nomination because of that holds not water. Secondly, another that them of the major point that this entire hearing was started out with on the first day was that people should be scared by these proceedings because they will lose coverage, Health Care Coverage for preexisting conditions. Out timebeen again run and time again. I am not going to ask you to go through that again but i will make a couple comments about that. As i said earlier news hearings, even back when we were debating obamacare, there was no disagreement about covering preexisting conditions. And in every proposal from our side since that time, coverage for preexisting conditions has been included. It is not something that there is an effort to or are to eliminate in terms of protection and it is not at risk in the Supreme Court case. As you have, i think, very clearly described in your testimony, judge barrett. Finally, with regard to that, if those assurances in those facts do not make it clear, senator tillis has introduced legislation called the protect act which will put into law once again protections for preexisting conditions in our Health Care Coverage and every one of my colleagues on the others of the aisle voted no to stop that from moving forward. Its there. The bill, the protect act, is in the senate. We can vote on it if we can just get permission to proceed to it from our colleagues. So, this notion that preexisting conditions is somehow at jeopardy is simply rolling out yet again in this Campaign Cycle another one of the arguments that does not hold water. Now, i do want to move to some questions for you, judge barrett. Was again, after it extensively discussed yesterday and the day before, you have been attacked on the basis of concerns about your willingness to follow precedent and what of my colleagues and i heard wright said he thought that you may participate in issuing a judicial era of activism in overruling precedent of the courts and, basically, pushing an agenda that you wont admit to having. I know you have answered this a lot yesterday. We are going to go through it again. Ytou we things that you were asked about was the 2013 law review article that you feel was not correctly reflective of what you said and how you feel. Would you please, would you like to take an opportunity to clarify that for us . Judge barrett sure. That article was responding, i set a couple times the Supreme Court gives different president ial strength to constitutional cases and to statutory cases and that article was responding to arguments that beher started this should eliminated altogether or it should be absolute, and i was taking the Supreme Court doctrine as it exists where constitutional cases are not absolutely insulated from overruling, which is the position that every Supreme Court justice of whom i am aware has had. Sometimes you do have to overrule cases. Otherwise you do not have brown versus the board of education. I was just identifying some of the virtues of that position. I was defending in that article the current Supreme Court clearly , and i very said in that article that you cannot just impose a new vision with votes that you have to take reliant interests and that always lack of certainty about how the calculus runs counter to keeping the status quo. Sen. Crapo thank you. I found it amazing that you would be accused of being a judicial activist, because you are textualist and an t,. Ginalis as i understand your writings. I would like to look at a few of your writings. Sou have described stari decisi as a fixture of the federal judicial system. You have stated that the Supreme Court, that you recognize the Supreme Court follows a presumption that precdeedent will stand. Correct . Judge barrett and not only erroneous and unworkable that has to take into account reliance interest and other factors as well. Sen. Crapo yes, that was actually next on my list. Judge barrett im sorry. Sen. Crapo you anticipated that. And you have spent a lot of time and i will not ask you to do it again going to those requirements that are in place before a judge or a justice would seek to become an activist in the sense of overturning the existing precedent of the court. And you have also said that partisan politics are not a good reason for overturning precedent. I assume that goes without saying, correct . Are some oft, those your writings and you have written much more. But lets look at some of the case law. You have got a pretty significant record now in the seventh circuit. A pretty as i see it, solid record there of following precedent. The first issue isnt is in 2019 you had a discussion with judge ok. And i think, could you explain that conversation . It related to a case where you were clarifying the even though you disagreed in a previous circumstance relating to it that you would follow precedent, or do you recall that conversation . Judge barrett i recall the conversation. We did it for a professor in the Political Science department primarily in undergrad audience. And we answered questions back and forth out of range of topics. I do not remember the particulars. Sen. Crapo this was not a case. It was a scenario you were asked about annette conversation and you made the clarification that in that scenario and you made the clarification i it was a conversation and you made the clarification then in this scenario is consistent judge barrett if i had dissented the first time around and lost . Sen. Crapo thats apparently what that is all about. Lets talk about a couple cases. In price versus the city of chicago you joined and affirming courtsover a district dismissal of a suit by pro like after his prolife activists. What role did precedent play there . Judge barrett president prec edent control the case. Price was nearly identical to the one that the court had upheld in hill. Sen. Crapo even though in this case you ruled against a prolife interest in following precedent, correct . Judge barrett correct. The cityo in lett v. Of chicago you apply the Supreme Courts test for evaluating restrictions on a Public Employee speech. Do you recall that case . Did you follow the precedent . V. Barsky, the seventh arcuit held that petitioners prior convictions no longer qualified as predicate offenses under certain criminal act. Again, following precedent of the Supreme Court and the seventh circuit. Im just picking out a few. You have got a very full record of these. In my view, i only found one case where you actually did not follow seventh circuit president. P[recedent. And that was the case of g v. The United States. Why did you not follow the precedent then . Judge barrett in that case there was precedent that was all on point and the Supreme Court issued a series of subsequent decisions which called our prior precedent into doubt. So, the seventh circuit has a rule called circuit rule 40e and when we conclude as a fullcourt you circulated opinion to the full court to say i think our president should be overruled because it had fallen out of step with later developments in the Supreme Court. I circulated that precedent, the opinion pursuant to 40e, and the full court agreed and we overruled precedent. Sen. Crapo the way i would summarize that is the court, with your support, overruled the seventh circuit precedent because of Supreme Court precedent overruled that. Judge barrett not directly. Sen. Crapo so you were following Supreme Court prece dent to take that action . Judge barrett yes. Sen. Crapo lets look at your cases and im going to go through some statistics. Statistics sometimes get outdated so if these are not accurate please tell me. E before me tells me that you have authored 79 majority opinion since the writing of the seventh circuit . Judge barrett i dont know. So, i will take your word for it. Sen. Crapo thats what my information size. And it says that you participate in the disposition of 922 appeals. Does that sound approximately accurate . Judge barrett i think i have, the numbers that i have looked at recently suggested that i have participated in 600 panels that were appellants close to 1000 matters that would include things like stay, certificates of appeal, stay applications, etc. Is, crapo my understanding and these statistics might vary a little bit because the numbers are little different then you say, but i think this is pretty accurate, that your majority opinions have been unanimous, 95 of the time. In other words almost always when you join a majority it is unanimous conclusion of the corporate of the panel. Is that correct . Judge barrett that is my understanding. Sen. Crapo the statistics ics say that it is 95 of the time that it is unanimous for the decisions of the panel. Congressionalrs, research service, in all the cases you heard resulting in a reported opinion, you only dissented 1. 84 of the time. Sixth among the 11 active judges of the seventh circuit which is right about in the middle. This report also says that your reported majority opinions drew dissent 6. 41 of the time which grants you sixth among the 11 panelists, the 11 active judges, write about in the middle. The reportedhat majority change drew separate writing 7. 69 of the time. Among the 11u 8th active judges of the seventh circuit which means your opinions were some of the least likely to draw a dissent or a concurrence. That point of all these statistics is this is not the record of someone who is an activist in overturning precedent. This is the record of someone who follows precedent. And i just want to thank you for being that kind of a judge, because that is one of the reasons i am so glad to support your as we move forward. Now, again, unfortunately, today, once again, and i thought we had this resolved yesterday, youve been challenged on what you knew about the president s on various issues and whether that influenced your positions. In fact, it was even implied that a law review article that you wrote that was probably written before the president was even president was something that you were influenced in writing because you knew what the president thought. In any event we are going to have to go back again and ask you these questions about, you have already said yesterday that the president did not talk to you, his staff did not talk to you, no one talked to about robe v. Wade and california v texas. Judge barrett i made no commitments on any of those cases. Sen. Crapo that was my next question. Because today it has been implied that you basically just have been following the president s statements, his tweets, even things he may have felt or believed before he was president. And trying to make your decisions consistent with that. Once again, has the president or his team or anyone talk to you about any case, or received a commitment from you about how you would rule on any case . Judge barrett no, senator crapo. Sen. Crapo all right. I hope that we can once again put that one to rest. And could you also, once again restate is anybody above the law in the United States . Judge barrett no one is above the law in the United States. Sen. Crapo thank you very much. I told you yesterday i would ask if you saw softballs. Judge barrett how come softballs turn out not to be softballs . Sen. Crapo these are some of my hard balls. Im going to leave those because i only have three minutes left. I just want to talk to you for a minute about what academia. What led you to your decision to move out of practice into academia . Judge barrett well, when i was in law school i thought i might like to teach some day i really like teaching. I considered being a teacher. I mean, being a secondary School Teacher was one of the things i thought about in college. As i said in my speech at the announcement of my nomination that my mom was a teacher and my dad was a lawyer. Lawi wound up being a professor. So i loved the idea of teaching students. I like the idea of communicating with clarity. Complicated doctrines to them to help them. I have very much enjoyed teaching the 2000 students i have taught and mentoring them as young adults disembarking on their careers and in many cases for those whove not havd much time betweenn undergrad and law school. It has been a really rewarding experience paid sen. Crapo you have obviously been very influential in that because so many of your students and your colleagues speak so highly of you. You actually also anticipated two of my other questions about it. I only have one more to ask and that is, what was your favorite class to teach . Judge barrett oh. Its hard to pick a favorite. It is like asking who is your favorite child. I really enjoyed teaching somata classes. Federaltional law and courts overlap directly with the things i was writing about. I taught evidence mostly because i needed somebody to do it. Whats funny about that, i didnt do scholarship i did not write scholarship about evidence. And i was doing it as service, Service Class because you need someone to take it. It turned out to be really fun to teach just because it was fun to be able to engage students and interactive exercises and i can use movie clips to do it and it turned out to be a very fun class to teach even though it did not overlap with the things i was writing about. Sen. Crapo thank you very much, judge barrett, and it is an then the fourth day of confirmation hearings, judge barrett got the day off. As Committee Members heard from outside witnesses. Among them, two law clerks from the u. S. Appeals court seventh circuit. First, a representative from the American Bar Association announcing the rating for judge barrett. Process and our evaluation of judge barrett. Rating judge barrett a of wellqualified, as you know, our highest rating. , the Standing Committee has conducted thorough nonpartisan, nonideological, impartial peerrevieweds of all nominees of of the federal courts. e assess the nominees integrity, professional, competence and integrity. The Standing Committee does not propose propose or recommend nominees