The American Bar Association has unanimously rated Brett Kavanaugh as well-qualified to serve on the Supreme Court, the group announced Friday.
The well-qualified rating, the highest a nominee can earn, comes just before Kavanaugh will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing, which kicks off Tuesday morning and is expected to last four days.
The American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary has been evaluating nominees to the federal bench for more than 60 years. The committee is made up of 15 members and is tasked with evaluating the qualifications of nominees to the Supreme Court, U.S. courts of appeals, and U.S. district courts, among others.
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According to the group, the committee focuses specifically on integrity, professional competence and judicial temperament and does not take into account the nominee’s philosophy, political affiliation, or ideology.
Trump nominated Kavanaugh to succeed Justice Antony Kennedy, who retired, in July.
Since then, Senate Democrats have been fighting to derail his nomination, raising concerns about Kavanaugh’s views on executive power and the future of abortion rights and healthcare, as well as pushing for access to a trove of documents from Kavanaugh’s tenure in the White House.
Democrats, though, have so far been unable to slow down the nomination process, and with control of 49 seats in the Senate, they face an uphill battle to kill Kavanaugh’s nomination.
If Kavanaugh is confirmed by the Senate, he will be the second justice on the Supreme Court nominated by President Trump.
Trump tapped Justice Neil Gorsuch last year to fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat following Scalia’s death in 2016. Gorsuch, too, received a unanimous well-qualified rating from the American Bar Association.
