Kavanaugh Cases: Sided With Big Business 76%, Against Public Interest 87%, Public Citizen Reports
"Kavanaugh Sided With U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Big Businesses Associations in 76 Percent of Cases," Aug. 30, 2018.
Public Citizen Examined Past Decisions Involving Chamber, National Association of Manufacturers and American Petroleum Institute
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh usually ruled in favor of three big business associations during his time on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Public Citizen’s U.S. Chamber Watch project said in a report released today. In cases that came before him and in which the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers or the American Petroleum Institute participated as a party or amicus curiae, Kavanaugh sided with the groups 25 out of 33 times, or 76 percent.
“Over the past several decades, big business associations, led by the Chamber, have become far more active in federal litigation,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “The involvement of these associations signals to judges what the Chamber and other trade associations believe to be important.”
Also today, Public Citizen released a memo (PDF) analyzing Kavanaugh’s decisions in which corporations have used the First Amendment as a tool to challenge regulation of economic activity that traditionally would not have been viewed as raising free speech issues. His judicial opinions broadly embrace expansion of the First Amendment to protect commercial activity.
These findings follow a Public Citizen report released Wednesday that found Kavanaugh decided or wrote an opinion against the public interest 87 percent of the time in split-decision cases in five key areas, including consumer, environmental and worker rights cases.
*U.S. Senate hearings on Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court are scheduled to begin next week. Read the report. https://www.citizen.org/media/press-releases/kavanaugh-sided-us-chamber-commerce-big-businesses-associations-76-percent
- MORE -
"In Split Decisions, Judge Kavanaugh Sided With Corporations 87% of the Time," Citizen Vox, Aug. 29, 2018..
During his 12 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh decided or wrote an opinion against the public interest 87 percent of the time in split-decision cases in five key areas, including consumer, environmental and worker rights cases, Public Citizen found in a report (PDF) released today.
Kavanaugh has participated in more than 1,000 cases and written hundreds of opinions while on the court of appeals, most of which were decided by three-judge panels. A significant proportion of those cases were decided on a 3-0 basis, which often reflected consensus among judges across the political spectrum. In other cases, the judges disagreed with one another and therefore issued 2-1 decisions.
Of the 101 split-decision cases involving Kavanaugh, Public Citizen analyzed his decisions and opinions in five areas: consumer and regulatory issues and administrative law, environmental protection, worker rights, claims alleging police or human rights abuses, and antitrust. The report found that Kavanaugh has overwhelmingly reached conclusions favorable to business interests and opposed to consumers, workers, environmental protections and victims of human rights abuses:
•In 18 of 22 cases involving consumer and regulatory issues or matters of administrative law, Kavanaugh sided with corporations against agencies, or with agencies against public-interest challengers.
•In 11 of 13 environmental cases, Kavanaugh sided with corporations or states challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or other federal agencies for being too protective of the environment, or against environmental groups seeking stronger environmental enforcement.
•In 15 of 17 cases involving worker rights, Kavanaugh sided with employers against employees or employees’ unions, or with employers against the National Labor Relations Board.
•In seven of seven cases involving victims suing for compensation over police or human rights abuses, Kavanaugh sided with the alleged abuser and against the victims.
Additionally, the report found that during his tenure, Kavanaugh has:
•Been inconsistent on the issue of deference to agency action;
•Favored a standard benefitting corporations on the issue of standing;
•Imposed high bars to citizen access to the courts, but treated corporations differently;
•Opposed independent agencies; and
•Been highly skeptical of civil rights claims.
For detailed analysis and the full list of cases reviewed, read the full report.
https://www.citizenvox.org/2018/08/29/in-split-decisions-judge-kavanaugh-sided-with-corporations-87-of-the-time/
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His long career has generated 5-6 million records according to the National Archives. I don't know how many Kavanaugh documents Dems. have received, or the reason to withhold 100,000 Bush era records. https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142147748
- "Read This. Be Outraged. Call Your Senators": Trump Suppressing 100,000 Pages of Kavanaugh's Record." With confirmation hearings starting next week, over 20 Democrats still have not vowed to oppose Kavanaugh. By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, Sept. 1, 2018.
- Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh speaks after US President Donald Trump announced his nomination in the East Room of the White House on July 9, 2018 in Washington, DC. -
With the Senate Judiciary Committee set to hold its first confirmation hearing for President Donald Trump's right-wing Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh on Tuesday, the Trump White House reportedly directed on Friday that over 100,000 pages of documents from Kavanaugh's tenure as an associate White House counsel under former President George W. Bush be withheld from senators.
According to a letter notifying Senate leaders of Trump's directive, which was obtained by Buzzfeed, the White House has decided to withhold documents "including advice on judicial nominations and "advice submitted directly to President Bush; substantive communications between White House staff about communications with President Bush; and substantive, deliberative discussions relating to or about executive orders or legislation considered by the Executive Office of the President."
"In total," Buzzfeed continued, "27,110 of Brett Kavanaugh's documents from his time in the White House counsel's office under Bush—101,921 pages—are not being turned over to senators at the direction of the Trump administration." Activists and legal experts reacted to Friday's news with outrage, arguing the move is further evidence that the White House is working to suppress elements of Kavanaugh's record. Additionally, according to documents that were released on Friday, Kavanaugh has suggested that limits on individual contributions to political campaigns have "some constitutional problems."
More, https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/09/01/read-be-outraged-call-your-senators-trump-suppressing-100000-pages-kavanaughs-record
grooming lawyers and judges on all levels with megadonor support since 1982.
-How Conservatives Built A Powerful Judicial Pipeline, The Week, Aug. 2018.- 'We thought we were just planting a wildflower among the weeds of academic liberalism and it turned out to be an oak.' - Antonin Scalia.
The Federalist Society built a national farm system for conservative judges that has changed the nation. It's an organization of more than 70,000 conservative and libertarian lawyers and law students with chapters at every accredited law school in the country. All of the Supreme Court's conservative justices - Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Chief Justice John Roberts - have been members, as has Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump's nominee to replace retired justice Anthony Kennedy. That's no coincidence: The Federalist Society exerts unparalleled influence over Republican judicial appointments, offering the definitive endorsement of a potential judge's conservative bona fides.
Its members "place a premium on individual liberty, traditional values, and the rule of law," the society states. In practice, that translates to fewer restrictions on gun ownership and campaign donations, and opposition to legal abortion, government regulation of private industry, and race-based affirmative action policies that defy a "color-blind Constitution." During his campaign for president, Trump promised that all of his judicial appointees would be "picked by the Federalist Society."..Scalia and Bork were the leading proponents of originalism, which holds that judges should interpret the Constitution by attempting to discern the literal meaning of the text when it was written; if the Framers - the "Federalists" - didn't specify a right to abortion or to privacy, for example, then these rights have no constitutional basis. (Liberal justices, by contrast, perceive the Constitution as "a living document," whose descriptions of basic rights can be interpreted in a more expansive way tailored to modern circumstances.)..
The organization claims to be a nonpartisan "society of ideas," but that it shares objectives with the Republican Party is undeniable. It receives millions of dollars from conservative and libertarian megadonors such as the Mercer family and the Koch brothers; the society reported $28 million in assets in 2017. To help seed the system with conservatives, judges who belong to the Federalist Society give prestigious clerkships to fellow members, who then have a better shot at one day becoming judges themselves. More, https://theweek.com/articles/791928/how-conservatives-built-powerful-judicial-pipeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society
