Confirming Brett Kavanaugh Now Would Destroy The Supreme Court As We Know It

[BeckyDem]

Geoffrey R. Stone
Guest Writer

October 1, 2018

The Senate should not confirm Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to serve as an associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. His confirmation would do serious damage to the credibility and integrity of the Supreme Court as a critically important institution in our constitutional system.

I say this not because Kavanaugh is not intellectually qualified to serve on the court. To the contrary, viewed solely from that perspective, he is as well qualified as most of the other justices who have been confirmed in recent decades — including Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor, David Souter, Lewis Powell, Warren Burger and Harry Blackmun, to name just a few. From this standpoint, I agree with the American Bar Association’s original evaluation that Kavanaugh is intellectually and professionally well qualified to serve on the court.

For a number of reasons, though, other considerations enter the picture. First, there is the unconscionable conduct of Senate Republicans in refusing to confirm President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland in 2016. By any measure, Garland was as qualified as — indeed, more qualified than — Kavanaugh. But the Senate Republicans, in order to manipulate the confirmation process in a determined effort to control the future direction of the court, violated every well-established norm in a profoundly dishonest effort to get our nation to this point — a point at which, if Kavanaugh is confirmed, there will be five Justices on the Supreme Court who are more aggressively conservative than any other justice, except Antonin Scalia, who has served on the court in living memory.

[Achilleaze]

1. "Whoopee!" - The Kremlin (R)

the kremlin just luvs the republican sell-out of America, and all the republican moves to weaken American democracy.

Disgusting.

[Hoyt]

2. I'd be willing to bet most, if not all, the other Justices would rather Kavanaugh withdraw.

There are plenty of others -- with equally obnoxious beliefs -- available without the baggage.

[BeckyDem]

3. If he gets seated we should go after him. He is unfit for many reasons and the process

the cons have used is included in that grievance.

[shirleye]

4. i think the court blew itself up when it appointed Bush

[hedda_foil]

5. Link?

[Timewas]

6. When the Dems take control

They have the power to add justices, there is nothing in the constitution that sets the number...