With the announcement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, tongues wagged about who would fill Kennedy’s shoes. To be sure, Kennedy was nominated by beloved Republican President Ronald Reagan, but came down more like a centrist on some critical conservative issues.
Conservatives across the country now hope that President Trump’s selection of Judge Brett Kavanaugh will shift the Supreme Court to the right slightly.
In his acceptance speech, he talked about his mother, also a judge, who started her career working in predominantly African American schools in the Washington, D.C. area as well as his father, who also excelled in law. He noted that the “separation of powers protects individual liberty” and said that he took pride in the fact that many of his law clerks were women. He also spoke of his Catholic faith and his voluntarism with Catholic causes and sports.
In Politico today, J.D. Vance, who wrote Hillbilly Elegy, wrote about Kavanaugh, his former law professor:
“He is a committed textualist and originalist, one whose time on the bench has revealed a unique ability to apply these principles to legal facts. He deeply believes in the constitutional separation of powers as a means for ensuring governmental accountability and protecting individual liberty. From the start of his career, he’s applied the Constitution faithfully, even when that made him a lonely voice. He has done so with particular tenacity on the issue that matters most to the president: taking power away from unelected bureaucrats and returning it to elected officials.”
No, Judge Kavanaugh isn’t Allison Eid, who we still hope to see on the U.S. Supreme Court. But, let’s be realistic, not every single Supreme Court Justice can come from Colorado (even if we’d like them to).
Kavanaugh is a solid pick and, we hope, an upgrade from Kennedy.