CHICAGO — A front-run­ner to fill the Supreme Court seat vacat­ed by the death of Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg is a fed­er­al appel­late judge who has estab­lished her­self as a reli­able con­ser­v­a­tive on hot-but­ton legal issues from abor­tion to gun control.

Amy Coney Bar­rett, a devout Catholic, is hailed by reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives and oth­ers on the right as an ide­o­log­i­cal heir to con­ser­v­a­tive icon Antonin Scalia, the late Supreme Court jus­tice for whom she clerked. Bar­rett met with Trump at the White House on Mon­day, accord­ing a per­son famil­iar with the vet­ting process who spoke to The Asso­ci­at­ed Press on con­di­tion of anonymity.

Lib­er­als say Barrett’s legal views are too heav­i­ly influ­enced by her reli­gious beliefs and fear her ascent to the nation’s high­est court could lead to a scal­ing back of hard-fought abor­tion rights. She also would replace the jus­tice who is best-known for fight­ing for women’s rights and equality.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has said he’ll nom­i­nate a woman and Bar­rett is thought to be at the top of his list of favorites. The Chica­go-based 7th U.S. Cir­cuit Court of Appeals judge was con­sid­ered a final­ist in 2018 for Trump’s sec­ond nom­i­na­tion to the high court, which even­tu­al­ly went to Brett Kavanaugh after Jus­tice Antho­ny Kennedy retired. Barrett’s selec­tion now could help Trump ener­gize his base weeks before Elec­tion Day.

At just 48, Bar­rett would be the youngest jus­tice and her tenure could last for decades. She’s made her mark in law pri­mar­i­ly as an aca­d­e­m­ic at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame, where she began teach­ing at age 30. She first donned judges’ robes in 2017 after Trump nom­i­nat­ed her to the 7th Circuit.

But she wouldn’t be the only jus­tice with lit­tle pri­or expe­ri­ence as a judge: John Roberts and Clarence Thomas spent less time as appel­late judges before their Supreme Court nom­i­na­tions and Ele­na Kagan had nev­er been a judge before Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma nom­i­nat­ed her in 2009.

Bar­rett men­tioned Kagan when asked in a White House ques­tion­naire in 2017 about which jus­tices she admired most, say­ing Kagan brought to the bench “the knowl­edge and skill she acquired as an aca­d­e­m­ic to the prac­ti­cal res­o­lu­tion of disputes.”

When Barrett’s name first arose in 2018 as a pos­si­ble Trump pick, even some con­ser­v­a­tives wor­ried her sparse judi­cial record made it too hard to pre­dict how she might rule. Near­ly three years on, her judi­cial record now includes the author­ship of around 100 opin­ions and sev­er­al telling dis­sents in which Bar­rett dis­played her clear and con­sis­tent con­ser­v­a­tive bent.

She has long expressed sym­pa­thy with a mode of inter­pret­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion, called orig­i­nal­ism, in which jus­tices try to deci­pher orig­i­nal mean­ings of texts in assess­ing if someone’s rights have been vio­lat­ed. Many lib­er­als oppose that strict approach, say­ing it is too rigid and doesn’t allow the Con­sti­tu­tion to change with the times.

Barrett’s fond­ness for orig­i­nal texts was on dis­play in a 2019 dis­sent in a gun-rights case in which she argued a per­son con­vict­ed of a non­vi­o­lent felony shouldn’t be auto­mat­i­cal­ly barred from own­ing a gun. All but a few pages of her 37-page dis­sent were devot­ed to the his­to­ry of gun rules for con­vict­ed crim­i­nals in the 18th and 19th centuries.

And, all indi­ca­tions are that Bar­rett is staunch­ly opposed to abor­tion, though she has often side-stepped answer­ing ques­tions about the topic.

In the 2017 White House ques­tion­naire, Bar­rett was asked if it was her view that abor­tion was always immoral. She didn’t answer the ques­tion direct­ly but said: “If I am con­firmed (to the 7th Cir­cuit), my views on this or any oth­er ques­tion will have no bear­ing on the dis­charge of my duties as a judge.”

In a 2013 Texas Law Review arti­cle, Bar­rett list­ed few­er than 10 cas­es she said are wide­ly con­sid­ered “super-prece­dents,” ones that no jus­tice would dare reverse even if they believed they were wrong­ly decid­ed. Among them was Brown vs. Board of Edu­ca­tion, which declared racial seg­re­ga­tion in schools unconstitutional.

One she didn’t include on the list: Roe v. Wade, the 1973 land­mark case that affirmed a woman’s right to abor­tion. Schol­ars don’t include it, she wrote, because pub­lic con­tro­ver­sy swirling around it has nev­er abated.

Abor­tion and women’s rights were the focus of a bruis­ing 2017 con­fir­ma­tion process after Barrett’s nom­i­na­tion to the 7th Circuit.

Oth­ers point­ed to Barrett’s mem­ber­ship of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame’s “Fac­ul­ty for Life” group — and that she had signed a 2015 let­ter to Catholic bish­ops affirm­ing the “val­ue of human life from con­cep­tion to nat­ur­al death.”

Sen. Dianne Fein­stein told Bar­rett her views sug­gest­ed reli­gious tenets could guide her think­ing on the law, the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­rat telling Bar­rett: “The con­clu­sion one draws is that the dog­ma lives loud­ly with­in you.”

Bar­rett respond­ed that her views had evolved and that she agreed judges shouldn’t “fol­low their per­son­al con­vic­tions in the deci­sion of a case, rather than what the law requires.”

Sen. Chuck Grass­ley, an Iowa Repub­li­can, crit­i­cized Democ­rats for press­ing Bar­rett on her faith, say­ing it could be seen as a “reli­gious test” for the job.

The Sen­ate even­tu­al­ly con­firmed her in a 55–43 vote, with three Democ­rats joined the majority.

Her near­ly three-year stint as a judge has includ­ed at least one abor­tion-relat­ed case.

An 2018 rul­ing by a 7th Cir­cuit pan­el declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al an Indi­ana law requir­ing the bur­ial of fetal remains after an abor­tion or mis­car­riage, and pro­hibit­ing clin­ics from treat­ing the remains as waste. The law, signed by then-Gov. Mike Pence, also barred abor­tions on the basis on the race, sex or dis­abil­i­ties of the fetus.

Bar­rett joined three con­ser­v­a­tive judges in ask­ing for the rul­ing to be tossed and for the full court to rehear the case. They didn’t have the votes to force a rehear­ing. But they issued a joint dis­sent on the rehear­ing deci­sion, clear­ly sug­gest­ing they thought the Indi­ana law was constitutional.

The dis­sent, writ­ten by Judge Frank East­er­brook, argued that Indiana’s law would have been upheld “had it con­cerned the remains of cats or gerbils.”

Bar­rett was raised in New Orleans, the eldest child of a lawyer for Shell Oil Co. She earned her under­grad­u­ate degree in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture in 1994 at Rhodes Col­lege in Mem­phis, Tenn. She and her hus­band, Jesse Bar­rett, a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, both grad­u­at­ed from Notre Dame Law School. They have sev­en chil­dren, includ­ing two adopt­ed from Haiti and one with spe­cial needs.

Before her clerk­ship with Scalia from 1998 to 1999, Bar­rett served as law clerk for Lau­rence Sil­ber­man for a year at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Cir­cuit. Between clerk­ships and enter­ing acad­e­mia, she worked from 1999 to 2001 at the Miller, Cas­sidy, Lar­ro­ca & Lewin law firm in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

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Asso­ci­at­ed Press Writer Zeke Miller con­tributed to this report. Bieseck­er report­ed from Washington.