Kavanaugh on SC: sparks or harmony?

Senate poised to confirm Supreme Court nominee

WASHINGTON, Oct 6, (Agencies): When Clarence Thomas took a seat on the US Supreme Court in 1991, he had only barely survived a series of bitter Senate hearings on allegations of sexual harassment that divided the country.

But he said he was quickly welcomed by his eight fellow justices.

“After going through all those difficulties, the members of the court were just wonderful people to a person,” Thomas said in an appearance at the Library of Congress earlier this year. “So the court itself is quite different from the ordeal. It’s almost the opposite of the ordeal it took to get there.”

Brett Kavanaugh will be counting on those strong traditions of collegiality if, as expected, he is confirmed by the Senate as a Supreme Court justice this weekend.

Kavanaugh’s nomination hearings were rocked by university professor Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations that he sexually assaulted her in 1982, when they were both high school students.

Two other women also alleged sexual misconduct by the conservative Kavanaugh.

Raised

The accusations as well as Kavanaugh’s angry denials and fierce criticism of Senate Democrats widened the US political divide just weeks before congressional elections and raised concerns about the court’s reputation in US society.

Like Thomas in 1991, Kavanaugh will be joining a right-leaning court. He succeeds retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was often the decisive 5-4 swing vote on social issues, and consolidates conservative control of the ninemember Court.

But the four liberal justices include 85-year-old feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who made her name as an advocate for women’s rights.

Ginsburg voiced support for the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct even as Kavanaugh was about to face a grueling Senate hearing into the allegations against him, saying that unlike in her youth “women nowadays are not silent about bad behavior.”

Still, Supreme Court experts believe the justices are likely to move past any differences, as they have done in the past.

“I think the justices care very much about collegiality and not purely for the sake of collegiality. They think it’s important for people who disagree with each other to work together,” said Carolyn Shapiro, who served as a law clerk for liberal Justice Stephen Breyer.

Strong

The liberal justices – Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor – need to seek support from at least one conservative in ideologically divisive cases, so they have a strong incentive not to alienate the new arrival, court experts said.

Kagan, known for her strategic nous, has an existing relationship with Kavanaugh. In her former role as dean of Harvard Law School, she hired Kavanaugh to teach there.

Sotomayor has stressed the importance of collegiality, recounting at a 2016 event how the justices often eat together after oral arguments.

“There is no topic that’s off limits. But we try to avoid controversy, so we’re very guarded about raising topics that we think might create hostility in the room,” she said.

Ginsburg was herself famously close friends with the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, with the two bonding over a shared love of opera despite their ideological differences.

And Thomas is himself is seen as a popular figure among the other justices.

Aside from his belligerent Senate appearance and his reputation as a doctrinaire conservative, Kavanaugh has been seen as a calm, easy-going judge on the federal appeals court in Washington. He is also a self-declared fan of sports and beer. Supreme Court justices do not always get on, however. Most notably, several justices chafed at the leadership of Chief Justice Warren Burger, who served from 1969 to 1986.

The broader problem facing the court may be whether the circumstances of Kavanaugh’s confirmation have damaged not just Kavanaugh’s reputation but also the institution itself.

“This is going to make the court seem more political, and I think that’s dangerous because the legitimacy of the court turns on the belief that law is distinct from politics,” said Ernest Young, a conservative law professor at Duke University.

Meanwhile, the US Senate was expected to confirm conservative judge Kavanaugh as the next Supreme Court justice on Saturday – offering President Donald Trump a big political win and tilting the nation’s high court decidedly to the right.

Battle

The months-long battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination has gripped Washington, laying bare the partisan gridlock on Capitol Hill and the political polarization of America just a month before midterm elections.

The Senate vote, will bring an end to a raucous nomination process defined by harrowing testimony from a woman who says Kavanaugh tried to rape her when they were teenagers – and his fiery rebuttal.

If Kavanaugh is confirmed, Trump will have succeeded in having his two picks seated on the court – a major coup for the Republican leader less than halfway through his term.

His promotion to the Supreme Court will also stand as a demoralizing defeat for Democrats who battled hard to block the 53-year-old judge at all costs.

Kavanaugh’s confirmation was all but sealed on Friday when he won the support of key Senate Republican Susan Collins and conservative Democrat Joe Manchin. Their statements of support brought the number of senators supporting Kavanaugh to 51 in the 100-member chamber.