During his dozen years at the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia Circuit, Kavanaugh has shown a more confident conservatism than Judge Kennedy, the 30-year-old veteran who would succeed. Kavanaugh takes a high-altitude approach, espousing great constitutional principles. As a result, it is meant to be more than just a vote for the right. It could have a powerful influence on the country's legal agenda for decades.
The Kavanaugh decisions have already been cited in Supreme Court decisions, such as a 2013 ruling banning certain US prosecutions of foreign companies allegedly responsible for human rights violations abroad and a 2015 ruling banning to the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate mercury emissions. coal plants regardless of costs.
Having sailed through Washington's corridors of power since the 1990s, Kavanaugh, 53 and known for his personal manners, could also be more persuasive with his colleagues than other new judges.
Kavanaugh's conservative record, compared to that of conservative and conservative Conservative Kennedy, would mean a decrease in individual rights for women and minorities, affecting access to abortion and the opportunities available to them. affirmative racial action. On broader issues involving the power of the government, a new Kavanaugh judge could mean a further reduction in environmental regulations and consumer protection.
Based on his past writings, Kavanaugh would also strengthen the power and prerogatives of the President – an area likely to attract the attention of the Senate due to the investigation of Special Adviser Robert Mueller on the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its links with
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Many judges in recent years have been bred from the powerful circuit of DC, which handles important disputes over the power of the government, but only the mandate of Ruth Bader Ginsburg compared with Kavanaugh's. She served for 13 years on the DC circuit before President Bill Clinton in 1993 called him to the high court.
Kavanaugh's opinions reflect a well-developed approach to restricting regulatory authority as well as restricting individual civil rights
It's a case about executive power and individual freedom, "wrote Mr. Kavanaugh at the beginning of the year, dissenting from an opinion of the DC Circuit upholding the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, headed by a single director
and protecting individual freedom, the authors of the Constitution separated the legislative, executive and judicial powers of the new national government, "he continued.
Independent agencies, he added, are "a fourth headless branch of the US government (which) holds tremendous power over the economic and social life of the United States."
When he was dissenting from a DC Circuit ruling last October preventing the Trump administration from preventing a migrant teenager in Texas from obtaining an abortion, Kavanaugh expressed his opinion with broader ideas.
He emphasized that "the government has licensed interests to promote fetal life, to protect the best interests of a minor and to abstain from facilitating abortion". Kavanaugh approved the administration's efforts to block the procedure, at least until the girl could get a sponsor, a process that could have taken weeks and made it more difficult to interrupt. of pregnancy. The majority position allowed the girl to immediately obtain an abortion.
As Kavanaugh asserted that the majority's decision represented "a radical extension of the Supreme Court's jurisprudence on abortion," he adds: "This is undoubtedly the case for many Americans. "
" From a certain point of view, he writes, in evaluating the abortion debate, some do not agree with the cases that allow the government to refuse to fund abortions and allow the government to impose regulations such as parental consent, informed consent and waiting times … On the other hand, some do not agree with cases where the US Constitution provides for an abortion.
Obamacare
In 2011, the dispute over the Affordable Care Act sponsored by President Barack Obama came to court in Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh was dissenting while the DC Circuit confirmed the ACA's crucial mandate for individuals to buy insurance by 2014, saying that it was too much early to hear the controversy over a tax issue. In doing so, Kavanaugh relied on Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and the court's lessons in the early twentieth century: "(H) history and precedent advise to be cautious before deciding to adjudicate constitutional questions too much After all, what seems patently correct now may seem quite different in a few years.
Some conservative critics blamed Kavanaugh for failing to examine the merits of the dispute and declared the ACA unconstitutional. But such critics were even more indignant when Republican-appointed Chief Justice John Roberts voted the deciding vote in the Supreme Court in 2012 to uphold the ACA requirement that all Americans buy Medical insurance.
On the current scale of the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh could compare himself to Judge Samuel Alito, appointed in 2006 and flawlessly conservative. It is unlikely that Kavanaugh will land at the farthest point of the yard, where Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, the first-named Trump judges, have lined up.
Kavanaugh also seems more willing than Gorsuch to fine relations in the social milieu distinct from the highest court of the nation, where the nine are thrown together closed quarters – for life. (In the beginning, Gorsuch resisted some institutional traditions that matter to Roberts and had some tough public exchanges with Ginsburg, but he seems to have settled at the end of his first full term.)
That would make Kavanaugh – in a social vein – more like Judge Elena Kagan, nominated in 2010 by Obama who had similar experience in the executive sector and took steps early in his tenure to ensure good relations with Judge Antonin Scalia right and Ginsburg on the left.
It turns out that on Monday night, when he accepted Trump's appointment, Kavanaugh set out to greet one of the judges he would work with.
In a part-time position at Harvard, he said, "I teach that separation of powers from the Constitution protects individual freedom, and I remain grateful to the Dean who hired me, the Judge Elena Kagan. "
