|
?:reviewBody
|
-
In the autumn of 2018, President Donald Trump's nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court dominated news cycles after three women publicly accused him of sexual assault or sexual misconduct during his high school and college years. Those women, in particular Kavanaugh's principal accuser Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, faced a torrent of personal attacks and malicious misinformation, but Judge Kavanaugh himself also came in for criticism, largely in relation to his historical consumption of alcohol and his personality, but also on the basis of his past pronouncements and suitability for a federal judgeship. On 2 October, the anti-Trump, pro-labor union Facebook page Union Thugs posted a meme which alleged that Kavanaugh, prior to his appointment as a federal judge in 2006, was desperately lacking in trial experience and had been promoted directly from the position of law clerk to a seat on the federal bench: This claim has two components. The first part, that Kavanaugh was promoted directly from law clerk to federal judge, leaves out significant portions of Kavanaugh's background and professional history. The second part, that Kavanaugh had never tried a case before being nominated for a judgeship in 2003, is mostly accurate. In June 2006, Kavanaugh was sworn in as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, commonly known as the DC Circuit. In welcoming him into the role, then-President George W. Bush said: A few days earlier, the U.S. Senate had voted 57-36 to confirm Kavanaugh to the position, with 53 Republicans and four Democrats supporting his nomination, 35 Democrats and one Independent opposing it, and seven senators not voting. Opponents of Kavanaugh's confirmation had highlighted his alleged lack of experience and close ties to Bush, with the late Democratic icon Ted Kennedy saying, in a Senate debate: In referring to Kavanaugh's role in some of the most politically divisive events in recent memory, Kennedy almost certainly meant the 2000 Florida recount and Independent Counsel Ken Starr's investigation into the Whitewater scandal, which expanded to cover President Bill Clinton's affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky and ultimately yielded grounds for the unsuccessful impeachment of Clinton. In the mid-1990s, Kavanaugh took part in the Clinton investigations led by Starr, for whom he had worked in 1992 and 1993 when Starr was U.S. Solicitor General. In 1999, the New York Times described Kavanaugh as having been one of the most important lawyers on the Lewinsky inquiry. During this period, Kavanaugh controversially re-investigated the death of Vince Foster, Clinton's White House Counsel, despite the fact that several official investigations had already concluded that Foster shot himself to death in 1993. (Since it took place, Foster's death has become the subject of rampant conspiracy theories implicating Bill and Hillary Clinton, about which more can be read here.) Furthermore, Kavanaugh was involved in writing up parts of the second half of Starr's eventual report to Congress, which outlined the grounds for Clinton's impeachment. Kavanaugh later expressed regret that Congress had decided to publish the entire report, which included intimate details of Clinton and Lewinsky's sexual relationship, without reviewing it in advance. In late 2000, Kavanaugh joined the legal team of then-Texas governor George W. Bush as the contested results of the presidential election in Florida went before the U.S. Supreme Court. 'A law clerk promoted to a judge' Before his confirmation as a judge on the DC Circuit in 2006, Kavanaugh had the following experience (in reverse chronological order): Bush first nominated Kavanaugh to the DC Circuit in February 2003, but concerns over Kavanaugh's relative lack of experience and partisanship triggered a protracted filibuster by Congressional Democrats. In 2003, an American Bar Association (ABA) committee gave Kavanaugh its highest rating of well qualified for a position on the DC Circuit. However, the committee re-evaluated him in 2005 and 2006 and, on the latter occasion, downgraded their rating to qualified. As the ABA explained, a rating of qualified still means that The nominee meets the Committee’s very high standards with respect to integrity, professional competence and judicial temperament and that the Committee believes that the nominee will be able to perform satisfactorily all of the duties and responsibilities required by the high office of a federal judge. In 2006, the ABA committee, which is responsible for evaluating federal judicial candidates, wrote that Kavanaugh enjoys a solid reputation for integrity, intellectual capacity, and writing and analytical ability and a majority of the committee's 15 members rated him qualified, with a minority rating him well qualified and none of them deeming him not qualified. However, the committee outlined two major reasons why they had downgraded their endorsement of Kavanaugh between 2003 and 2006 -- increased concerns over his putative lack of experience as a lawyer, and new concerns over his judicial temperament, in particular his ability to remain impartial as a judge: Twelve years later, on 30 August 2018, the ABA committee's 15 members voted unanimously to give Kavanaugh a rating of well qualified for the position of U.S. Supreme Court justice, concluding: Judge Kavanaugh meets the highest standards of integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament. However, after a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in which Dr. Christine Blasey Ford outlined her allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh, and Kavanaugh defended himself, ABA president Bob Carlson wrote a letter on 27 September urging the Senate committee to postpone any vote on confirming Kavanaugh until the Federal Bureau of Investigation had completed an investigation into the sexual assault allegations. It's clear that President Bush did not promote Kavanaugh directly from a law clerk to a federal judge, as the meme claims. Notwithstanding his inexperience as a trial lawyer or judge, Kavanaugh's last clerkship ended in 1994, nine years before Bush nominated him to the DC Circuit and 12 years before he was confirmed to it. In those intervening years, Kavanaugh worked (albeit almost entirely outside the courtroom) on some high-profile cases and investigations, and at the highest levels of the executive branch. 'Never tried a case in a regular court' It's not clear what the meme means by regular court, but let's take a look at Kavanaugh's overall courtroom and trial experience before his nomination to the DC Circuit in 2003, and his appointment in 2006. In July 2003, Kavanaugh responded to written questions put to him by the Senate Judiciary Committee after his nomination by President Bush. A few questions hit directly on his experience (or lack thereof) as a trial lawyer: I have not been a trial lawyer is the key takeaway from these answers. By his own admission, Kavanaugh had never appeared in any court below the state or federal level, and had never been the lead attorney in a trial of any kind, whether civil or criminal, which supports the Union Thugs statement that he had never tried a case. Kavanaugh did take part in the preparation of some components of some significant court cases, and he did on a few occasions make oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, the DC Circuit itself, other federal appeals courts, and state courts. As part of his 2003 questionnaire response, Kavanaugh outlined his role in some significant cases, including a couple related to the Vince Foster investigation and Ken Starr's Clinton probe. Despite his work on these cases, Kavanaugh had not tried a case in court from start to finish by the time he was nominated by President Bush in 2003 to take his place on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. This component of the Union Thugs meme is therefore accurate.
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}