Amy Coney Barrett grilled on Day 2 of Senate confirmation hearings

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., after launching a line of questioning on the Affordable Care Act, which Barrett largely avoided, focused on Barrett’s impartiality as he says Trump has put her and the court "in the worst of positions."

“Are you able to commit to recuse yourself from if it arises out of the 2020 presidential election?” Leahy asked.  

Barrett said she would consider questions of appearance but that she can’t offer a legal conclusion right now on whether she would ultimately recuse herself from election-related cases.

“I commit to fully apply the law of recusal and to consider any appearance question. I will apply the factors that other justices have before me in determining whether it requires my recusal. I can't offer a legal conclusion about the outcome of the decision I would reach right now,” Barrett said.

Senator Leahy, I want to begin by making two very important points and they have to do with the ACA and with any election dispute that may or may not arise. I have had no conversation with the president or any of his staff on how I might rule in that case. It would be a gross violation of judicial independence for me to be asked about that case and how I would rule or make such a commitment. I also think it would be a complete violation of the independence of the judiciary for anyone to put a justice on the court as a means of obtaining a particular result.

Leahy also asked Barrett about a 2006 newspaper advertisement she had signed onto opposing "abortion on demand" but did not disclose in her 2017 appeals court confirmation hearing, Right to Life of St. Joseph County, Indiana. Leahy said the group likened in vitro fertilization to manslaughter in the ad and asked for her subsequent views. 

“I signed the statement that you and I have just discussed and you are right that the St. Joseph County Right to Life ran an ad on the next page, but I don't even think the IVF view you're expressing was on that page. Regardless, I have never expressed a view on it. And for the reasons that I've already stated, I can't take policy positions or express my personal views before the committee,” Barrett said. 

“My personal views don't have anything to do with how I would decide cases, and I don't want anybody to be unclear about that,” she added.

Barrett has not relied on one note in the hearing so far, ABC News’ Trish Turner reports inside the hearing room. She has nothing but a blank pad of paper, two pencils and two bottles of water on her table. At one point, she was asked to show what notes she had and held up the pad.

Behind Barrett sits her family. 

Earlier in the day, Feinstein asked Barrett to introduce them to the hearing room.

“Judge, it is wonderful to see you here. Also with the family that I have been observing. They sit still, quiet, you've done a very good job,” Feinstein said. 

“I have eyes in the back of my head,” Barrett joked, before introducing them. “I have my husband Jesse, my son, J.T., my daughter Emma, my daughter Juliet, my daughter Tess and Liam and six siblings with me today. It's my sister Vivian, my sister Eileen, my brother Michael, my sister Meghan, and my sister Amanda -- and my sister Carey is sitting right over there,” she said. 

“You don't have a magic formula for how you do it and handle all the children and your job and your work and your thought process, which is obviously excellent, do you?” Feinstein asked.

“It's improv,” Barrett replied.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, used his time to slam Democrats for what he called “painting the judge as heartless and on a mission to scrap the health care law.”

“Apparently her concerns in Roberts' ruling in the Obama decision disqualifies her,” Grassley said, referring to his deciding vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act. He then launched into a defense into one of her writings from 2017.

In an essay published by a journal of Notre Dame Law School, Barrett argued that Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, “pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute” -- a writing Democrats are likely to seize on.

Grassley asked Barrett directly if she has a “goal” of appealing the Affordable Care Act and whether Trump told her to plan on it. 

"Absolutely not," Barrett said. "If I had been, that would have been a short conversation."

Grassley also questioned Barrett on her dissent of a case involving The First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice bill passed by Congress and signed by Trump in Dec. 2018.

Feinstein, recalling more personal stories, this time of friends married after the landmark case on same-sex rights, Obergefell v. Hodges, pivoted her questioning to Barrett’s views on same-sex marriage. 

“Do you agree with this particular point of Justice Scalia's view that the U.S. Constitution does not afford gay people the fundamental right to marry?” she asked. 

Barrett, again, said she is not Justice Scalia but also did not give insight into her views, citing the "Ginsburg rule" -- a precedent for refusing to answer questions about issues before the Supreme Court.

“Senator Feinstein, as I said to Senator Graham at the outset, if I were confirmed you would be getting Justice Barrett, not Justice Scalia. So I don't think that anybody should assume that just because Justice Scalia decided a decision a certain way that I would, too,” Barrett began.

“Justice Ginsburg used this to describe how a nominee should comport herself at a hearing, no hints, no previews, no forecasts. That had been the practice of nominees before her but everybody calls it the Ginsburg rule because she stated it so concisely and it has been the practice of every nominee since. I'm sorry to not be able to embrace or disavow his position but I can't do that on any point of law,” Barrett said.

Feinstein replied, “that’s too bad.”

“You identify yourself with a justice that you, like him, would be a consistent vote to roll back hard-fought freedoms and protections for the LGBT community. And what I was hoping you would say is that this would be a point of difference where those freedoms would be respected. And you haven't said that,” Feinstein said. 

Barrett responded that she has “no agenda.”

“I do want to be clear that I have never discriminated on the basis of sexual preference and would not ever discriminate on the basis of sexual preference. Like racism I think discrimination is abhorrent. On the questions of law, however, because I'm a sitting judge and because you can't answer questions without going through the judicial process, I can't give answers to those very specific questions,” she said. 

Asked earlier by Feinstein if the Constitution gives the president the authority to delay an election, Barrett said she didn't want to be a "pundit."

"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," she said.