President Trump has selected Judge Brett Kavanaugh as his “Gorsuch 2.0.” While many in Trump’s base supported Amy Coney Barrett, others say that Kavanaugh has also been a staunch and faithful defender of religious liberty and fundamental rights during his tenure on the D.C. Circuit Court and is a proven textual originalist. He will also likely be much easier than Barrett to confirm.
While rumors have been vacillating between the four most likely nominees, Trump really had all excellent choices to pick from. Varying branches of the GOP base supported one nominee over the other since Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, but the bottom line is that when Kavanaugh is confirmed—which will most likely happen prior to the November 2018 midterm elections—the majority of the Supreme Court will now be conservative.
President Trump said during the announcement that selecting a Supreme Court justice is a “profound responsibility of the president” and “what matters is not the judge’s political views […] but whether they can do what the law and Constitution requires.”
Knowing well that Justice Gorsuch is currently viewed among many as Trump’s chief accomplishment, Trump aligned Kavanaugh with Gorsuch, saying “I chose Justice Gorsuch because I knew that he, like Justice Scalia, would be a faithful servant of our Constitution” and said that Kavanaugh would be faithful to upholding the “crown jewel” of our republic.
So, what does a Justice Brett Kavanaugh mean realistically for the future of the court? Many on both sides are framing the issues as “sides,” but a conservative majority on the Supreme Court is, constitutionally speaking, the most fundamentally fair and impartial to all parties and all viewpoints.
This is because the Constitution only gives very specific, limited powers to the federal government to protect our God-given rights. It is the crown jewel, and also is the foundation of our government. The Constitution does not give us our rights, but rather, the Declaration of Independence provided the mandate for our civil government to create a system that would best accomplish this legitimate goal.
Kavanaugh said in his remarks on Monday night that, to him, a judge “must interpret the law, not make the law” and “interpret the Constitution as written” and revere it. This bodes very well for a truly conservative, originalist majority. Let us hope that Kavanaugh will indeed be a faithful textualist.
The fact that protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court tonight ahead of the president revealing Kavanaugh as the nominee just shows that the Left will not be satisfied with genuine fairness and equality. They want to push their pro-abortion and LGBT agenda and they know that whoever the nominee would be will represent a loss of their ability to legislate from the bench.
Ironically, the protesters were shown today on shouting, “What do we want? Equality!” Yet, they refuse to acknowledge that conservatism is truly the only political philosophy that genuinely seeks to conserve equality and impartiality for all.
We will await to see a strong shift to pro-family, pro-individual rights, and pro-Constitution on the Supreme Court, which would be a wonderful thing. With this confirmation, America has the best, most realistic opportunity to overturn bad, activist precedent, including Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges.
President Trump appears to have fulfilled another promise to voters by nominating a judge presumably that will be faithful to the Constitution and the rule of law. We should be extremely grateful this was not Hillary Clinton’s selection. Now, the Senate should not grandstand on politics or personal ideology during the confirmation hearings, but rather simply inquire of Judge Kavanaugh whether he will faithfully apply the Constitution and the rule of law.
Jenna Ellis (@jennaellisJDFI) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is Director of Public Policy at the James Dobson Family Institute. She is a constitutional law attorney, radio host, and the author of The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution. She can be reached at [email protected].
