Brett Kavanaugh, a Conservative Stalwart in Political Fights and on the Bench
President Trump announced his selection of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to be his nominee for the Supreme Court on Monday during a ceremony at the White House.
By Adam Liptak
WASHINGTON — Brett Michael Kavanaugh was just 38 when he was first nominated to a federal appeals court in Washington. But he had already participated in an extraordinary number of political controversies, attracting powerful patrons and critics along the way.
He served under Kenneth W. Starr, the independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton, examining the suicide of Vincent W. Foster Jr., the deputy White House counsel, and drafting parts of the report that led to Mr. Clinton’s impeachment. He worked on the 2000 Florida recount litigations that ended in a Supreme Court decision handing the presidency to George W. Bush. And he served as a White House lawyer and staff secretary to Mr. Bush, working on the selection of federal judges and legal issues arising from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
He was “the Zelig of young Republican lawyers,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, said at Judge Kavanaugh’s first confirmation hearing, in 2004. “If there has been a partisan political fight that needed a good lawyer in the last decade, Brett Kavanaugh was probably there.”
But Judge Kavanaugh, 53, has also formed lifelong friendships with liberals, many of whom praise his intellect and civility. In his professional life, before he became a judge, he was often a moderating force.
Working for Mr. Starr, Judge Kavanaugh concluded that Mr. Foster had in fact killed himself. He opposed the public release of the narrative portions of Mr. Starr’s report detailing Mr. Clinton’s encounters with a White House intern. As staff secretary to Mr. Bush, he said in 2006, he strived to be “an honest broker for the president.”
As a judge, though, he has been a conservative powerhouse, issuing around 300 opinions. His dissents have often led to Supreme Court appeals, and the justices have repeatedly embraced the positions set out in Judge Kavanaugh’s opinions.
He has written countless decisions applauded by conservatives on topics including the Second Amendment, religious freedom and campaign finance. But they have particularly welcomed his vigorous opinions hostile to administrative agencies, a central concern of the modern conservative legal movement.
In a dissent in January from a decision upholding the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he issued a ringing endorsement of executive power.
“To prevent tyranny and protect individual liberty, the framers of the Constitution separated the legislative, executive and judicial powers of the new national government,” Judge Kavanaugh wrote. “To further safeguard liberty, the framers insisted upon accountability for the exercise of executive power. The framers lodged full responsibility for the executive power in a president of the United States, who is elected by and accountable to the people.”
Brett M. Kavanaugh, a federal appeals court judge in Washington, has a conservative record, elite credentials and deep ties among the Republican legal groups that have advanced conservatives for the federal bench.
While a law student at Yale, Judge Kavanaugh published a law review article proposing a way to strengthen protections against race discrimination in jury selection.
After law school, he served as a law clerk to three judges: Judge Walter Stapleton of the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia; Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco; and Justice Kennedy, whom Judge Kavanaugh hopes to replace.
During that last clerkship, Judge Kavanaugh overlapped with a young Neil M. Gorsuch, who had been hired by a retired member of the court, Justice Byron White, and also worked part time in Justice Kennedy’s chambers.
No Supreme Court justice has had more than one former law clerk join the court. If Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination is successful, two of Justice Kennedy’s clerks from a single term will serve together, probably for decades. Judge Kavanaugh also showed his loyalty to another former Kennedy clerk, Richard Cordray.
Before he joined the bench, Judge Kavanaugh made around $6,000 in contributions to political candidates, all but one of them Republican. The exception was Mr. Cordray, who received a $250 contribution for his unsuccessful 1998 campaign to become Ohio’s attorney general and $1,000 for a failed bid in 2000 for the Senate. Mr. Cordray, who also worked with Judge Kavanaugh at Kirkland & Ellis, went on to become the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency Judge Kavanaugh later voted against, and is now running for governor of Ohio.
Years later, Justice Kennedy still spoke with admiration verging on awe of the young Brett Kavanaugh’s work ethic, Professor Walker said, recounting the justice’s words: “Brett was always there the first thing in the morning before I came in and last thing at night when I was leaving. I’d say, ‘Brett, you’re working too hard. You’ve got to go home.’ But he would never listen to me.”
Judge Kavanaugh’s only appearance as a lawyer before the Supreme Court was an attempt to obtain the notes of a lawyer for Mr. Foster. He argued that the attorney-client privilege had ended when Mr. Foster committed suicide, and lost by a 6-to-3 vote.
Judge Kavanaugh wrote large parts of Mr. Starr’s 1998 report to Congress, though he has said that he did not draft its narrative portion, which included many explicit details of Mr. Clinton’s sexual encounters with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.
He has acknowledged authorship of parts of the report that suggested possible grounds for impeachment, including “areas where the president may have made false statements or otherwise obstructed justice.” Some of those grounds have echoes in Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Mr. Trump.
WHERE KAVANAUGH ,TRUMPS NOMINEE MIGHT FIT ON THE SUPREME COURT .
President Trump's selection, Brett Kavanaugh, is a Washington insider who appears unlikely to drift left as other conservative justice have.
