Here are highlights of how both sides set the stage for questioning.
The high-stakes confirmation hearing for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, got underway Monday as Senate Republicans push for a final vote before Election Day despite Democratic calls to let voters decide who should pick a new justice.
Trump nominated Barrett to fill the seat left by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The four days of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, overseen by chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham, are unprecedented, with some members participating virtually and in-person. Barrett will appear at the witness table to face questions each day.
Hearings start at 9 a.m. each day and will be live streamed on ABC News Live.
Barrett, 48, a devout Roman Catholic, was a law clerk to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, considers him her mentor and follows his originalist interpretation of the Constitution. She practiced law at a Washington firm for two years before returning to her alma mater, Notre Dame Law School, to teach. She was nominated by Trump to the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in May 2017 and confirmed by the Senate that October in a 55-43 vote.
Amy Coney Barrett, if confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, would be the nation's 115th justice of SCOTUS and the first woman of school-aged children to serve on the nation's highest court.
No nominee has ever been confirmed by Congress this close to the election.
-ABC News' Trish Turner
Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett will focus on her family, morals and judicial philosophy when she appears before the Senate Judiciary committee Monday, according to a copy of her opening statement released Sunday.
The 48-year-old judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Notre Dame law professor and mother of seven wrote in her statement that she was "used to being in a group of nine -- my family."
Barrett, who was nominated to fill the seat left vacant by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, references the lessons she learned from the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, particularly as it pertains to her interpretation of the law, in her statement.
"The policy decisions and value judgements of government must be made by the political branches elected by and accountable to the people," Barrett's statement reads. "The public should not expect courts to do so, and courts could not try."
-ABC News' Allison Pecorin
Six in 10 registered voters say the U.S. Supreme Court should uphold Roe v. Wade as the basis of abortion law in the United States, and a majority in an ABC News/Washington Post poll -- albeit now a narrow one -- says the Senate should delay filling the court's current vacancy.
Sixty-two percent in the national survey say they would want the court to uphold Roe, while 24% would want it overturned; 14% have no opinion. There are broad political, ideological and religious-based divisions on the question.
Separately, 52% say filling the seat opened by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg last month should be left to the winner of the presidential election and a Senate vote next year. Forty-four percent instead say the current Senate should vote on Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the position.
That's a closer division than the 57%-39% preference for waiting in an ABC/Post poll late last month. That poll was conducted before Trump nominated Barrett and the Senate moved to proceed with her confirmation hearings, scheduled to start Monday.
Opposition to action has dropped among political independents, from 63% to 51%. Eighty-three percent of Democrats favor waiting to fill the seat, while 77% of Republicans in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, support action now.
Similarly, 77% of conservatives want action by the current Senate; 64% of moderates and 87% of liberals say wait. Among registered voters who want Roe upheld, 68% say the Barrett nomination should be set aside; among critics of Roe, 71% want the Senate to proceed.
Read more about the new ABC News/Washington Post poll here.
-Gary Langer of Langer Research Associates, conducted the poll.
