Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Kavanaugh sworn in as justice
After 50-48 Senate vote, he takes oath, joins court
WASHINGTON — Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in Saturday night as the 114th justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, just hours after a climactic 50-48 roll call vote in the U.S. Senate, the narrowest confirmation in nearly 150 years.
Even as Kavanaugh, 53, took the oath of office in a quiet private ceremony, protesters chanted outside the court building across the street from the U.S. Capitol.
Saturday’s Senate vote capped a fight that seized the national conversation for more than a week amid claims that as a young man he had sexually assaulted young women three decades ago — allegations he emphatically denied.
The accusations transformed the partisan clash from a routine struggle over judicial ideology into an angry jumble of questions about victims’ rights, the presumption of innocence and personal attacks against nominees.
Kavanaugh’s confirmation provides a defining accomplishment for President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, which found a unifying force in the cause of putting a new conservative majority on the high court.
Before the sexual accusations consumed the Senate’s and the nation’s attention, Democrats had argued that Kavanaugh’s rulings and writings as an appeals court judge had raised serious concerns about his views on abortion rights and on a president’s right to avoid legal investigations.
Trump, while flying Saturday to Kansas for a political rally, flashed a thumbs-up gesture when the Senate vote was announced and praised Kavanaugh for being “able to withstand this horrible, horrible attack by the Democrats.” He later telephoned his congratulations to the new justice.
Like Trump, senators at the Capitol predicted that voters will react strongly by defeating the other party’s candidates in next month’s congressional elections.
“It’s turned our base on fire,” declared Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Democratic leader Charles Schumer of New York also forecast gains
for his party, saying: “Change must come from where change in America always begins: the ballot box.”
The high court justices made a quiet show of solidarity Saturday. Kavanaugh was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts and the man he’s replacing, retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, as fellow Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan looked on — two conservatives and two liberals, respectively.
Noisy to the end, protesters interrupted the Senate call of the roll several times, shouting in the spectators’ gallery before Capitol Police removed them. Vice President Mike Pence presided over the Senate, ready to cast the tie-breaking vote on Kavanaugh if necessary.
With Kavanaugh’s swearing-in, the Supreme Court will be more conservative than at any other time in modern history.
There will be no swing justice in the mold of Kennedy, Sandra Day O’Connor or Lewis F. Powell Jr., who forged alliances with liberals and conservatives. Instead, the court will consist of two distinct blocs — five conservatives and four liberals. The court, in other words, will reflect the polarization of the American public and political system.
“This is going to be an extremely conservative Supreme Court,” said Tracey George, a law professor and political scientist at Vanderbilt University. “Even if Trump is not re-elected and a Democrat is elected, that is not going to change.”
PROTESTS AND PLEDGES
Trump has now appointed two high court justices in as many years.
But the cloud over Kavanaugh continues. Accusations from several women remain under scrutiny, and House Democrats have pledged further investigation if they win the majority in November’s general election.
Outside groups are scrutinizing an unusually long paper trail from Kavanaugh’s previous political and government work, with the National Archives and Records Administration expected to release a cache of millions of documents later this month.
Kavanaugh, an appellate court judge on the District of Columbia circuit for the past 12 years, pushed hard for the Senate vote — not just to achieve the capstone in his legal career, he said, but to clear his name.
Kavanaugh, a father of two, strenuously denied the allegations of Christine Blasey Ford, who says he sexually assaulted her when they were both in their teens.
After Ford’s allegations, Democrats and their allies rallied as seldom before, and there were echoes of Thomas’ combative confirmation over the sexual harassment accusations by Anita Hill, who had worked for him at two federal agencies.
Protesters swarmed Capitol Hill last week, creating a tense, confrontational atmosphere that put Capitol Police on edge.
As exhausted senators prepared for Saturday’s vote, some were flanked by security guards. Hangers and other items have been delivered to their offices, references to abortion and Roe v. Wade.
Some 164 people were arrested Saturday, most for demonstrating on the Capitol steps, 14 for disrupting the Senate’s roll call vote.
McConnell told The Associated Press in an interview that the “mob” of opposition — confronting senators in the hallways and at their homes — united his GOP majority as Kavanaugh’s confirmation teetered and will give momentum to his party in the midterm elections.
Beyond the sexual misconduct allegations, Democrats raised questions about Kavanaugh’s temperament and impartiality after he delivered defiant, emotional testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 27, in which he denounced the Democratic Party.
Kavanaugh called the sexual assault accusations “a calculated and orchestrated political hit” fueled by “revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.”
That language was a striking departure from Kavanaugh’s judicial opinions and his patient and measured responses at his first set of confirmation hearings, before the accusations of sexual misconduct surfaced.
Schumer said Kavanaugh’s “partisan screed” showed not only a temperament unfitting for the high court but a lack of objectivity that should make him ineligible to serve.
Republicans argued that a supplemental FBI investigation instigated by a wavering GOP senator and ordered by the White House turned up no corroborating witnesses to the sexual misconduct claims and that Kavanaugh had sterling credentials for the court. Democrats dismissed the truncated report as insufficient.
Deborah Ramirez, who alleged that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her while in college, issued a statement Saturday saying that witnesses who could have corroborated her allegations were not interviewed by the FBI.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said that by confirming Kavanaugh, the Senate was sending a deeply troubling message both to the nation’s girls and women — “your experiences don’t matter” — and to its boys and men.
“They can grab women without their consent and brag about it,” Murray said. “They can sexually assault women, laugh about it. And they’re probably going to be fine. They can even grow up to be president of the United States or a justice on the Supreme Court.”
Murray was first elected to the Senate in 1992, in the wake of the chamber’s 5248 vote to put Thomas on the Supreme Court, the last time issues of gender were so starkly highlighted in a confirmation process.
GLIMPSE OF CIVILITY
In the end, all but one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted for Kavanaugh. She said on the Senate floor late Friday that Kavanaugh is “a good man” but his “appearance of impropriety has become unavoidable.”
In a twist, Murkowski voted “present” Saturday as a courtesy to Republican Sen. Steve Daines, a Kavanaugh supporter who was in Montana to walk his daughter down the aisle at her wedding and missed the Senate vote. Murkowski’s “present” balanced out Daines’ absence without affecting the vote outcome, and gave Kavanaugh the same two-vote margin he would have received had both lawmakers voted.
It was the closest roll call to confirm a justice since 1881, when Stanley Matthews was approved 24-23, according to Senate records.
Murkowski’s move offered a moment of civility in an otherwise charged atmosphere. “I do hope that it reminds us that we can take very small steps to be gracious with one another and maybe those small gracious steps can lead to more,” she said.
Republicans control the Senate by a meager 51-49 margin, and announcements of support Friday from Republicans Jeff Flake of Arizona and Susan Collins of Maine, along with Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia, locked in the votes needed to confirm Kavanaugh.
Manchin was the only Democrat to vote for Kavanaugh’s confirmation. He expressed empathy for sexual assault victims, but said that after factoring in the FBI report, “I have found Judge Kavanaugh to be a qualified jurist who will follow the Constitution.”
Senators on both sides know they have work to do to put the chamber back together after ferocious debate that saw them arguing over the sordid details of high school drinking games, sexual allegations and cryptic yearbook entries.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said, “The Senate has been an embarrassment. We have a lot of work to do.”
MISCONDUCT COMPLAINTS
Chief Justice Roberts has received more than a dozen judicial misconduct complaints against Kavanaugh in recent weeks but has chosen for the time being not to refer them to a judicial panel for investigation.
Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sent a string of complaints to Roberts starting three weeks ago, according to four people familiar with the matter.
In a statement Saturday, Henderson acknowledged the complaints and said they centered on statements Kavanaugh made during his Senate confirmation hearings.
Under the law, “any person may file a misconduct complaint in the circuit in which the federal judge sits,” she said in the statement. “The complaints do not pertain to any conduct in which Judge Kavanaugh engaged as a judge. The complaints seek investigations only of the public statements he has made as a nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States.”
People familiar with the matter say the allegations made in the complaints — that Kavanaugh was dishonest and lacked judicial temperament in his Senate testimony — had already been widely discussed in the Senate and in the public realm. Roberts did not see an urgent need for them to be resolved by the judicial branch while he continued to review the incoming complaints, they said.
The situation is highly unusual, legal experts and several people familiar with the matter said. Never before has a Supreme Court nominee been poised to join the court while a fellow judge recommended that a series of misconduct claims against that nominee warrant review.
Roberts’ decision not to immediately refer the cases to another appeals court has caused some concern in the legal community. Supreme Court justices are not subject to the misconduct rules governing these claims.