The process of installing Judge Amy Coney Barrett as a new associate justice of the Supreme Court took place much too fast for me, for I wanted desperately to address her before she left us all behind to join the august company of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, the conservative majority of the court.

It had been my dream to assume the persona of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and in my imagination to dramatize myself questioning Judge Barrett during her confirmation hearing:

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Judge Barrett, I should like to begin by telling you how much I admire you. After a brilliant academic career, you became a respected member of the faculty at Notre Dame Law School, and your professorial success evidently led to your being named to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

“Your stunning professional career, moreover, has not prevented you and your husband from founding an extraordinary family of seven children, two of whom were adopted. You are also a woman of deep religious faith and learning as a practicing Roman Catholic.

“In sum, everything that we learn about your personal integrity, your religious beliefs, your social conscience and compassion, and your intellectual rigor inclines me to think that you will be fully mindful of the instruction given by God to Moses in Exodus 22:21-24 about the proper treatment of aliens when you remember President Donald Trump’s characterization of Mexican immigrants as rapists and murderers and his sanctioning of policies that allow the forcible separation of children from their families on our southern border.

“I am equally inclined to hope that you will recall the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 25:34-46 about caring for the hungry, the homeless, the sick and the incarcerated when you consider the frightening implications of overturning the Affordable Care Act.

“For the same reasons, how can you and I overlook the ugly and demeaning terms that the president regularly uses in reference to successful women like yourself, such as the governor of Michigan or Sen. Kamala Harris, or the many accusations of sexual assault made against him? Can we forget his undisguised contempt for the Constitution whenever it collides with his private interests or political purposes?

“The list of deeply troubling questions is lengthy, and I could go on, but at this point I feel obliged to ask you whether, as a principled jurist, you have not been appalled by the president’s declaration that he is nominating you so that you can help decide the election in his favor in the event of contested results? Has such a consideration made you feel somewhat sullied?

“Have you not been shaken by the hypocrisy of the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee, who rushed to consider your nomination on the very eve of an election, even as they were adamant in their refusal to consider a nomination by President Barack Obama many months before the end of his presidency?

“Finally, did you ever consider simply declining the nomination because it has contaminated everything that you seek to exemplify in your private and professional life?

“In this connection you will perhaps remember from your religious instruction one of my favorite bits of wisdom from Ecclesiasticus 13:1, ‘He who touches pitch shall be defiled by it.’

“I cannot tell you how much I and many others of every political persuasion would have truly admired you if you had dared to demonstrate such moral strength and integrity. How deeply I wish that you were not now seated across the room from me for these hearings.

“Now I must use my remaining time for some pertinent questions …”

Edward M. Bradley, of White River Junction, is professor of classics emeritus at Dartmouth College.