On July 30, 2020, President Trump made claims of voter fraud and suggested he wanted to delay

the upcoming election.

Does the Constitution give the President of the United States the authority to unilaterally

delay a general election under any circumstances?

Does federal law?

Well, Senator, if that question ever came before me, I would need to hear arguments from

the litigants and rebreathe and consult with my law clerks and talk to my colleagues

and go through the opinion writing process.

So if I give off the cuff answers, then I would be basically a legal pundit.

And I don't think we want judges to be legal pundits.

I think we want judges to approach cases thoughtfully and with an open mind.

That was Judge Amy Coney Barrett, finding a somewhat creative way of doing what Supreme

Court nominees have been doing for several decades now, refusing to answer how she might

rule on any conceivable future case or controversy should she be confirmed.

No matter how senators tried, they got nothing out of Barrett about where she would come

down on cases involving health care, abortion rights, gun regulation, or any of the other

many issues that will be before her or could be before her as a Supreme Court justice.

It may have been what has become par for the course in such confirmation battles, but

rarely of the stakes been so high as they are for the Barrett nomination.

We'll discuss our confirmation hearing with two close students of the Supreme Court and

the political process, Elise Hogue, president of Neural Prochoice America, and David Kaplan,

author of two books about the Court on this episode of Skull Duggery.

...