Although President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy and called him his mentor, his first judicial hero was the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, according to The Washington Post.
A speech Kavanaugh gave last September is receiving extra scrutiny due to its focus on abortion, which is certain to be a major and contentious topic at his confirmation hearings.
In the speech to the American Enterprise Institute, Kavanaugh noted Rehnquist's dissent in Roe v. Wade and his rejection of the idea of a "wall of separation between church and state."
Although Rehnquist was "not successful in convincing a majority of the justices in the context of abortion," Kavanaugh said the former chief justice was key in "limiting the court's role in the realm of social policy and helping to ensure that the court operates more as a court of law and less as an institution of social policy."
The Post points out that Kavanaugh subscribes to an originalist interpretation of the Constitution and clearly is not aligned with Kennedy.
Kennedy was capable of frustrating both conservatives and liberals, perhaps no better illustrated than in one term when he was the only justice in both 5-to-4 majorities when he (and conservatives) removed a crucial part of the Voting Rights Act and when he (and liberals) overturned the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which denied recognition of same-sex marriages.
Although Kavanaugh is often noncommittal in his writings about how he would approach cases, it is clear he thinks the Constitution gives the executive branch vast powers, to which the judiciary must defer and would be much less likely than other judges to declare a law ambiguous and thus defer to federal agency interpretations of regulations and implementation.
Relating to abortion, Kavanaugh spoke approvingly of Rehnquist's reasoning that new "unenumerated" rights should be recognized only if they were "rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people," and abortion was not, he said.
In a similar fashion, Kavanaugh said about Rehnquist writing the majority opinion when the court rejected the right to assisted suicide for the terminally ill that "He was successful in stemming the general tide of freewheeling judicial creation of unenumerated rights that were not rooted in the nation's history and tradition."
This type of criticism has been aimed not only at the court's decisions regarding abortion but also gay rights as well, which is sure to be another concern among many senators in the confirmation hearings.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.