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Tags: akhil reed amar | brett kavanugh | scotus | justice | senate | nominee

NYT: A Liberal Law Professor Makes Case for Kavanaugh

NYT: A Liberal Law Professor Makes Case for Kavanaugh
Judge Brett Kavanaugh (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

By    |   Monday, 09 July 2018 09:42 PM EDT

The nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh as Supreme Court justice is President Donald Trump's "finest hour" and "classiest move," a Yale Law School professor says.

In an opinion piece for The New York Times on Monday night, titled "A Liberal's Case for Brett Kavanaugh," Akhil Reed Amar argues Kavanaugh has "credentials, great intellect, unbiased judgment, and deep reverence for the laws and Constitution."

And, he argues, Kavanaugh also qualifies as a "great judge" for admitting and learning from past mistakes.

"Here, too, Judge Kavanaugh has already shown flashes of greatness, admirably confessing that some of the views he held 20 years ago as a young lawyer — including his crabbed understandings of the presidency when he was working for the Whitewater independent counsel, Kenneth Starr — were erroneous," Amar wrote.

"Although Democrats are still fuming about Judge [Merritt] Garland's failed nomination, the hard truth is that they control neither the presidency nor the Senate; they have limited options," he argued. "Still, they could try to sour the hearings by attacking Judge Kavanaugh and looking to complicate the proceedings whenever possible.

"This would be a mistake. Judge Kavanaugh is . . . a superb nominee."

Amar wrote that each Senate Democrat should pledge "either to vote yes for Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation — or, if voting no, to first publicly name at least two clearly better candidates whom a Republican president might realistically have nominated instead . . ."

"In exchange for this act of good will, Democrats will insist that Judge Kavanaugh answer all fair questions at his confirmation hearing," he wrote.

"The compromise I'm proposing would depart from recent confirmation practice. But the current confirmation process is badly broken, alternating between rubber stamps and witch hunts."

In the end, he argued, "Judge Kavanaugh could be confirmed with the 90-something Senate votes he deserves, rather than the 50-something votes he is likely to get."

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Headline
Making a case for a smooth Senate confirmation, a liberal Yale Law School professor says the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh as Supreme Court justice is President Donald Trump's "finest hour" and "classiest move."
akhil reed amar, brett kavanugh, scotus, justice, senate, nominee
310
2018-42-09
Monday, 09 July 2018 09:42 PM
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