Don’t play politics over Supreme Court nominee
The nomination of Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court is a welcome move.
As readers of my column know, I am no Donald Trump fan, but in this instance, the president has done well. Kavanaugh, whom I’ve worked with in the past, is a serious jurist with one of the most impressive backgrounds of any Supreme Court nominee in recent history.
His record speaks for itself, and senators will have ample opportunity to question his past opinions and decipher his legal doctrine before confirming him to the high court. But what they should not do is attempt to play politics with the nomination.
Unfortunately, Democrats are doing just that in a tit-for-tat attempt to stop Kavanaugh’s appointment. Their first line of attack was to claim that President Donald Trump should not have the right to get his choice confirmed before the midterm elections, claiming the same logic employed by Republicans when President Barack Obama tried to get Merrick Garland appointed before the 2016 election after Antonin Scalia’s death.
I didn’t agree with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to bring up the nomination of Garland for a vote. In my view, presidents should be given maximum leeway in appointing justices, provided they are qualified, and the Senate has an obligation to act on a nomination and vote to confirm or deny the appointment.
But even though the Republicans’ pausing because of a pending presidential election was a thin reed, that is no justification for not voting in advance of a midterm election, especially in a year in which control of the Senate is exceedingly unlikely to change.
But Democrats aren’t stopping at procedural objections to Kavanaugh’s appointment. They are busy marshaling a political campaign against him because they think he would be a pivotal vote to overturn Supreme Court precedents on abortion. In outrageously misleading rhetoric, Sen. Patty Murray said on the Senate floor, “A vote for President Trump’s Judge Kavanaugh is a vote to go back to the days when women had to go into back alleys for health care, when women had to ask for permission, when women were shamed and when women and girls died because of the laws of our land.”
Her comments made Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s claim that “Judge Kavanaugh’s own writings make clear that he would rule against reproductive rights and freedoms” seem moderate by comparison. There is simply nothing in Kavanaugh’s record that suggests either of those scenarios would be likely.
No one — not even Judge Kavanaugh, I suspect — knows how a Justice Kavanaugh would rule on a future abortion decision. It would depend on the facts and circumstances of the case, including any state laws at issue. Kavanaugh says precedent is an important facet of Supreme Court jurisprudence, as it must be if the court is to be more than a swinging pendulum that changes direction depending on who occupies the Oval Office.
The most important factor in confirming him will be his willingness to determine each case before him with due respect to precedent, in the narrowest context in which it can be decided, and with utmost deference to the clear words of the U.S. Constitution.