July 14 2018
Original article can be found here at the Millennial Spectator by Melanie Haid.
Who is Brett Kavanaugh?
With a long history of working in Republican politics, Brett Kavanaugh is President Trump’s Supreme Court Justice nomination. This nomination comes after the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who served from 1988 to 2018 on the Supreme Court.
Kavanaugh actually clerked for Kennedy in the early 1990s and was sworn by Kennedy onto the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2006.
Since Kavanaugh is only in his early 50’s, he would have a long run as a Supreme Court Justice if he were to become a justice. He spent the beginning of his career as a Republican activist and then later as a Republican judge, graduating law school from Yale University.
Along with this, Kavanaugh was an aide to Bill Clinton while he was president and has worked on a variety of important cases in the D.C. Circuit, including cases involving the Affordable Care Act and could have many more vital impacts in terms of abortion, LGBTQ+ and environmental rights.
Kavanaugh is known for being against government regulation of most kinds, including net neutrality, anti-pollution rules and advocate for the expansion of gun control rights under the Second Amendment.
Most notably regarding abortion right is the case of an undocumented teenager seeking to get an abortion in Texas, which he helped block access to.
Why was he nominated by President Trump?
Since he began campaigning, Trump promised his voters that he would do everything he could to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision allowing for safe, legal abortions in the United States.
The President’s list of possible nominees was not collected himself, but rather provided by the Federalist Society, a conservative group with a relatively strict ideology.
Trump went on to say that the political views of a judge are not that important, “whether they can set aside those views and do what the law and Constitution require” is what he deemed of utmost importance.
Liberal advocacy groups and Democratic politicians have already been targeting moderate senators in order to block the nomination.
What would securing his spot as a judge mean for the country?
Though Kavanaugh will be nominated in 2018, it is likely that, if selected, his votes will heavily impact where the rest of the country will go. As a pro-life candidate, he hopes to reassess Roe vs. Wade, which could make safe abortions illegal once again.
As well as this, environmental policies could potentially be threatened with his nomination. Kavanaugh is opposed to general government regulation, which includes anti-pollution efforts.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also mentioned that the ability of Americans to get good health care at affordable prices would be endangered; that Kavanaugh “would put a dagger” through this belief. The future of healthcare is also among the major changes likely to come to the United States system with the shift of the Supreme Court.
Lead photo courtesy of NPR
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