SCOTUS Brief – Friday, July 13, 2018
SCOTUS Brief – Friday, July 13, 2018
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Here’s the news you need to know, on this Friday, July 13.
On the Web:
1. Watch: Smart Choice
2. Democrats are in a terrible bind on Kavanaugh nomination
Senate Democrats are in a terrible bind as they search for a strategy to block Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who is expected to determine the ideological balance of the court for decades.
http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/396604-dems-in-terrible-bind-on-kavanaugh-nomination
3. EDITORIAL: Senate approval of Kavanaugh makes sense — even for Democrats
The battle lines have been drawn. President Trump’s selection of Brett Kavanaugh to fill the Supreme Court seat of retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy ensures a fierce Senate confirmation process, pitting the Democrat leadership who oppose all things Trump against Republicans who enjoy a razor-thin majority in that body.
4. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is excited about Brett Kavanaugh, and for a good reason
It’s impossible not to come away impressed,” McConnell said. “He has the all-star legal resume. The top-flight academic credentials. His extensive judicial record is defined by fairness, thoughtfulness, thoroughness, and analytical precision. I was already confident the president had made an outstanding choice. Now I’m even more confident.
5. Wall Street Journal Op-ed: Kavanaugh Is a Mentor To Women – by Amy Chua, professor at Yale Law School
I’ve gotten to know this side of Judge Kavanaugh while serving on Yale Law School’s Clerkships Committee for most of the past 10 years. It also affects me personally: Last year my daughter accepted an appellate clerkship from Judge Kavanaugh, which was set to begin next month. … Many judges use ideological tests in hiring clerks. Judge Kavanaugh could not be more different. While his top consideration when hiring is excellence—top-of-the-class grades, intellectual rigor—he actively seeks out clerks from across the ideological spectrum who will question and disagree with him. He wants to hear other perspectives before deciding a case. Above all, he believes in the law and wants to figure out, without prejudging, what it requires. Judge Kavanaugh’s clerks are racially and ethnically diverse. Since joining the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2006, a quarter of his clerks have been members of a minority group. More than half, 25 out of 48, have been women. In 2014, all four were women—a first for any judge on the D.C. Circuit. … If the judge is confirmed, my daughter will probably be looking for a different clerkship. But for my own daughter, there is no judge I would trust more than Brett Kavanaugh to be, in one former clerk’s words, “a teacher, advocate, and friend.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/kavanaugh-is-a-mentor-to-women-1531435729
6. Manchin, Donnelly Begin to Lay Groundwork for Voting to Confirm Kavanaugh
The most likely interpretation for this note of small-d democratic deference on so technical and weighty a decision is that the two Democrats are laying the groundwork for splitting with their party on Kavanaugh and attributing the heresy to public opinion back home, which in the end is likely to track support for and opposition to Donald J. Trump. I am sure both men (and also other Democrats in very red states like Heidi Heitkamp and Doug Jones) devoutly hope that Mitch McConnell firms up the votes of all 50 Republicans before they disclose their intentions, making their votes a matter of symbolic rather than concrete significance. For senators facing voters within weeks or even days of the final reckoning on Kavanaugh, it could well be that listening to one’s constituents simply means deciding what course of action, if any, is likely to get one to reelection. So don’t be surprised if red-state Democrats who lack a robust lead in their own races decide their bosses, the people, admire Brett Kavanaugh’s approach to constitutional law too much to turn him away.
7. Doug Jones vows “independent review” of Brett Kavanaugh
Jones’ position could be critical to Kavanaugh’s confirmation as the Republicans hold only a 51-49 advantage in the Senate. Assuming Kavanaugh’s candidacy receives support in the Senate Judiciary Committee, he would need a simple majority of Senate votes to be placed on the high court. U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby described Kavanaugh’s nomination as “an excellent choice.”
https://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2018/07/sen_doug_jones_vows_independen.html
8. CNN.com Op-ed: Democrats’ clown show of outrage over Kavanaugh fools no one – by Scott Jennings
President Donald Trump’s nomination of eminently qualified, mainstream conservative Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court — combined with the predictable Democratic outrage machine — has put red state Democratic US senators in a political box: side with their constituents or with the clown show that is the modern American left. … Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe took it a step further, tweeting that Kavanaugh’s nomination will “threaten the lives of millions of Americans for decades to come.” He did not address, however, how Americans who already died from tax cuts, (as one former Obama official threatened they would) or the United States pulling out of the Paris climate accords (a fatal mistake, as envisioned by a Vox writer), or the Obamacare repeal, (McAuliffe, once more) would perish again. … As long as Republican senators remain united, it is a safe bet Kavanaugh will get a handful of Democratic votes, making his lifetime appointment a bipartisan affair. For the red state Democrats, there’s nothing to be gained from joining the loony left on this quixotic campaign, but there’s much to lose by abandoning the desires of their center-right constituents who very much appreciate the President’s qualified judicial appointments.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/11/opinions/kavanaugh-dems-outrage-opinion-jennings/index.html
9. The Supreme Court confirmation battle is being closely monitored as the midterm elections loom.
WATCH: http://video.foxnews.com/v/5807503445001/?#sp=show-clips
