Kavanaugh Lifetime Appointment: The Full Story & What's At Stake, Wash Post [View all]

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*Issues for Brett Kavanaugh: The President Who Chose Him And the Supreme Court He Would Change* By Robert Barnes, The Washington Post, Sept. 2, 2018.

Two factors animate U.S. Appeals Court Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s crucial Supreme Court confirmation hearings that begin Tuesday in the Senate: one is the justice he would succeed, and the other is the president who chose him.

A host of issues are at stake with the departure of the court’s pivotal justice, Anthony M. Kennedy, whose swing-vote jurisprudence did not fit neatly into a conservative or liberal box. Abortion, affirmative action, the interplay of religious beliefs and gay rights, and the government’s protection of the environment are among the issues affected by Kennedy’s departure, and Kavanaugh is likely to be to the right of Kennedy on all.

But this confirmation fight also comes as the powers of a special prosecutor to investigate President Trump are part of a national debate, with important constitutional decisions on executive power and prerogative possibly awaiting the high court. The politics of the Trump age only add to the battle over a judge whose lifetime appointment could seal a consistently right-leaning majority that the conservative legal movement has long labored to establish.
“This is an appointment that almost certainly will change the ideological makeup of the court in a meaningful way,” said Lori A. Ringhand, a University of Georgia law professor with an expertise in Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Kavanaugh, 53, has a unique perspective on the issue of investigating the president. He spent years working for Kenneth Starr on the probe of President Bill Clinton, taking a hard line on what he termed Clinton’s lies and “pattern of revolting behavior” in connection with Clinton’s relationship with a White House intern. But Kavanaugh has since written he believes a president should not be distracted by civil suits and criminal investigations while in office.

If Kavanaugh’s view is nuanced — he’s never said the Constitution prohibits such investigations — reaction from Democrats has been simple enough to fit in a tweet. Such as this one by Sen. Kamala D. Harris, the Democrat from California who will be among those on the Senate Judiciary Committee questioning Kavanaugh: “The president is an unindicted co-conspirator in federal crimes and he has nominated someone to the Supreme Court who believes a sitting president should never be indicted."..

Democrats are far from over Republican efforts that denied President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland even a hearing in what would have been an appointment that would have moved the court in a different direction. Obama nominated Garland — like Kavanaugh, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — to fill the spot of the late justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative stalwart. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refused to consider the nomination until after the election, and his gamble paid off with Trump’s victory.

Liberal interest groups and Democrats also object to Kavanaugh’s nomination on both process and substance. Only a portion of records amassed from Kavanaugh’s more than five years in President George W. Bush’s White House, as staff secretary, have been requested by Senate Republicans, and even those are being screened by Bush’s lawyer, who represents, among others, White House counsel Donald McGahn.

Beyond that, Kavanaugh’s opponents say the importance of replacing the court’s pivotal justice requires an examination of not just credentials but judicial philosophy and ideology.. Abortion rights supporters and those opposed expect Kavanaugh would be a justice in the same vein, forming a majority with fellow conservatives Gorsuch and Justice Clarence Thomas that would make it more difficult for a woman to obtain the procedure..

Beyond Kavanaugh’s judicial opinions, Democrats will press his views on past writings and comments that could have a bearing on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of the Trump administration and Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Read More, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/issues-for-brett-kavanaugh-the-president-who-chose-him-and-the-supreme-court-he-would-change/ar-BBMKuVW



*Note: "Did You Go to a Washington Nationals Game With Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh?" ProPublica, Aug. 13, 2018. https://www.propublica.org/getinvolved/brett-kavanaugh-nationals-baseball-supreme-court