Judging ‘Obamacare’: Justice Barrett’s first high-profile case

Amy Coney Barrett joined the U.S. Supreme Court this week – replacing the liberal icon Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last month – and is expected to further strengthen the court’s conservative majority. 

Which conservative justices she aligns with, though, will be an open question in some cases. Even in terms of general judicial philosophies – like originalism, which interprets the Constitution as the framers originally intended, and textualism, which interprets statutes based on a strict reading of the text – the justices differ over how to apply them. On more specific legal doctrines and questions, there have been further differences of opinion.

One of the first cases Justice Barrett will hear argued – on Nov. 10 – is a challenge from several Republican-led states to the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as “Obamacare.”

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