Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett said Tuesday that she did not consider Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling establishing a woman’s right to an abortion, as a superprecedent, meaning a decision so widely accepted that it is invulnerable to serious legal challenges that could see it overturned.
Barrett said during the second day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing that she defined superprecedent as cases that are “so well settled that no political actors” or other people are “seriously pushing for its overruling.”
“I’m answering a lot of questions about Roe, which I think indicates Roe doesn’t fall into that category,” Barrett said in response to a question from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)
“Scholars across the spectrum say that doesn’t mean Roe should be overruled but descriptively it means it’s not a case everyone has accepted,” Barrett said.
