Thread by @Jmhenderson58

Like many of you, I followed the four days of hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Here's what I learned:

@SenWhitehouse @SenFeinstein @CoryBooker #JudgeKavanaugh #RoevWade #obergefell

The Democrats in the Senate are unhinged. Their disgraceful conduct insures that future nomination proceedings will more likely be carnival sideshows of screeching protestors interspersed with Senators demanding to ask questions and refusing to allow answers w/out interruption.

Then, of course, there were individual standouts:

Sen. Booker is an ass that likes having attention paid to himself. Sen. Whitehouse is an ass that likes to accuse others of wrong-doing without evidence thereof. Sen. Feinstein is an ass that lies about abortion statistics.

On the other hand:

Brett Kavanaugh writes a personal evaluation and performance letter to each of the young girls that play on the team he coaches.

Brett Kavanaugh pursued the cause of the disparity in the numbers of women federal judicial clerks and sought solutions that would remove structural unfairness in the pipeline that often leads from law school to clerkships to government counsel to judge to Supreme Court justice.

Brett Kavanaugh teaches.

Brett Kavanaugh mentors.

Brett Kavanaugh feeds the disadvantaged through a local church feeding program.

Brett Kavanaugh thoroughly prepares for every case to which he is assigned.

Brett Kavanaugh actively engages counsel during oral argument.

Brett Kavanaugh understands the need for justice to be done and to be understood.

Brett Kavanaugh has continuously pressed for reformation in sentencing guidelines to avoid the injustice of sentencing enhancements based on conduct charged but for which a criminal defendant has been acquitted.

Brett Kavanaugh's appellate opinions have been expressly adopted in 13 decisions of the Supreme Court.

Brett Kavanaugh is a regular joe, despite his Ivy League education, even the bartender at the neighborhood bar where he enjoys a beer and a burger did not know that he was a federal appellate judge until he saw the announcement of Trump's nomination of Kavanaugh.

Will Kavanaugh overturn Roe v. Wade? Obergefell v. Hodges?

Well, you see, here's the thing. Justices of the Supreme Court can't issue LAWS, in the way that the Congress or State legislatures do.

Rather, the Supreme Court decides cases. So, if Judge Kavanaugh wanted to overturn Roe or Obergefell, he will have set himself quite a task.

First, he'd have to arrange for a case to come before the Court.

Second, he'd have to ensure that reversing Roe (Obergefell) was a necessary component of the resolution of the case the Court heard. Third, he'd have to gain the support of four other justices for the decision.

And, fifth, the decision would have to be unimpeachable ... by that I mean that no PROCEDURAL irregularity might arise by which Justice Kavanaugh could be impeached.

(Imagine, for example, a justice corruptly conspiring to bring particular cases to the Court or obtain particular results from the Court).

I certainly hope that Roe is reversed.

It is a constitutional abomination in which judges substituted their policy preferences for the text of the Constitution. By doing so, the Roe Court rightly brought opprobrium on itself and on the judicial process.

Worse, it is a product of the worst kind of shabby historical review and reasoning.

Harry Blackmun's phony historical analysis -- on which he rested his view that States did not claim an interest in the lives of children before birth in enacting America's original abortion statutes -- is flatly contradicted by the texts of those statutes,

by their legislative histories, and by the histories of the judicial enforcement of those statutes before Roe v. Wade.

Neither of those considerations, however, can mask the gravest horror of Roe: the millions of unlived lives, unsung songs, unshared moments of bliss and sorrow, all lost in a fatal fantasy of freedom.

#prolife #ConfirmKavanaugh ##thewrittenconstitution

@threadreaderapp please roll up this thread