Washington: US President Donald Trump is expected to select Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last week, according to multiple US media reports citing unnamed Republican sources.
Barrett, 48, is a constitutional scholar who Trump named to the federal appeals bench in 2017. She is a favourite of the right-wing Federalist Society, a group that has orchestrated the confirmation of more than 200 conservative jurists to the federal courts since Trump took office.
On Friday evening, several US news outlets including CNN, the New York Times and The Hill reported that Trump plans to nominate Barrett for the empty Supreme Court seat in an announcement scheduled for Saturday.
In less than two years on the federal appeals bench, Barrett has quickly established herself as a conservative jurist who would swing the nine-member US Supreme Court to a 6-3 conservative majority.
Barrett met with Trump at the White House on Monday, according to the president, who described her without naming her as widely “respected” and “brilliant”.
