Unlike Kavanaugh, Barrett, 46, has no White House records and less than a year of court writings for senators to scrutinize, only law review articles and public comments. Based on what we know of her record, "I can't think of an area of law where she would vote differently than Kavanaugh on high-profile issues," says Ilya Shaprio, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. But there is one key difference: a less consistent respect for legal precedents, aka stare decisis.

Barrett argued in a 2013 Texas Law Review article that because of the way Supreme Courts had been weaponized by ideological interests from both parties, "a more relaxed form of constitutional stare decisis is both inevitable and probably desirable."

"I tend to agree with those who say that a justice's duty is to the Constitution and that it is thus more legitimate for her to enforce her best understanding of the Constitution rather than a precedent she thinks is clearly in conflict with it," Barrett wrote. That should be much scarier to the abortion rights crowd than Kavanaugh's past mild, criticisms of the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion from a constitutional standpoint.