Brett Michael Kavanaugh (born February 12, 1965) is an associate judge of the United States Supreme Court. On July 9, 2018, President Donald Trump nominated him for the position, and he has been in office since October 6, 2018.
He formerly served on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit as a United States circuit judge and worked as a staff lawyer for different federal agencies.
Kavanaugh was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Yale University, where he studied history.
After graduating from Yale Legal School, he worked as a law clerk for Judge Ken Starr.
Following Starr’s departure from the D.C. Circuit to lead the Office of Independent Counsel, Kavanaugh supported him with a number of investigations into President Bill Clinton, including producing the Starr Report, which recommended Clinton’s impeachment.
He joined the Bush administration as White House staff secretary following the 2000 presidential election, where he worked for George W. Bush’s campaign in the Florida recount. He was a key participant in the administration’s attempts to discover and confirm judicial nominations.
In 2003, Bush nominated Kavanaugh to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. His nomination hearings were tumultuous, and they were stalled for three years due to partisanship allegations.
Following a series of talks between Democratic and Republican senators, he was eventually confirmed to the D.C. Circuit in May 2006.
The Washington Post commissioned two law professors to assess Kavanaugh’s appellate court opinions in four different areas of public policy. From 2003 through 2018, he was “one of the D.C. Circuit’s most conservative judges,” according to the report.
On July 9, 2018, President Donald Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement.
Later in July, Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in high school in the early 1980s.
Kavanaugh has been accused of sexual misconduct by two more women as well.
All of the allegations against Kavanaugh were refuted by him. A supplementary hearing was held on Ford’s charges by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Following that, it voted 11–10 on party lines to send the confirmation to the entire Senate for consideration.
On October 6, the Senate voted 50–48 to confirm Kavanaugh, with one Democrat voting yes and one Republican voting no.
Since Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death in 2020, he has become seen as a pivotal swing vote on the Supreme Court.
Brett Kavanaugh Full List Of Books And Publications
- Kavanaugh, Brett (November 29, 2017). “Congress and the President in Wartime: A review of David Barron’s Waging War: The Clash Between Presidents and Congress, 1776 to ISIS (Simon & Schuster, 2016)”.
- Kavanaugh, Brett (2017). From the Bench: The Constitutional Statesmanship of Chief Justice William Rehnquist (2017 Walter Berns Constitution Day Lecture). American Enterprise Institute
- Kavanaugh, Brett (2017). “Keynote Address: Two Challenges for the Judge as Umpire: Statutory Ambiguity and Constitutional Exceptions”.
- Kavanaugh, Brett (2016). “One Government, Three Branches, Five Controversies: Separation of Powers Under Presidents Bush and Obama”
- Kavanaugh, Brett M. (2016). Garner, Bryan A. (ed.). The Law of Judicial Precedent. St. Paul: Thomson West. ISBN 978-0-314-63420-7. Brett Kavanaugh is one of thirteen co-authors (including Neil Gorsuch) of the treatise. The chapters are not written separately by the authors
- Kavanaugh, Brett (2016). “The Judge as Umpire: Ten Principles”. Catholic University Law Review
- Kavanaugh, Brett (2016). “Fixing Statutory Interpretation. Book Review: Judging Statutes. By Robert A. Katzmann. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press. 2014. Pp. xi, 171. $24.95”
- Kavanaugh, Brett (2014). “Our Anchor for 225 Years and Counting: The Enduring Significance of the Precise Text of the Constitution”.
- Kavanaugh, Brett (2014). “The Courts and the Administrative State (2013 Sumner Canary Memorial Lecture)”. Case Western Reserve Law Review.
- Kavanaugh, Brett; Tyler, Amanda L.; Easterbrook, Frank H.; Lettow, Charles F.; Raggi, Reena; Sutton, Jeffrey S.; Wood, Diane P. (2012). “A Dialogue with Federal Judges on the Role of History in Interpretation” ).
- Kavanaugh, Brett (2009). “Separation of Powers During the Forty-Fourth Presidency and Beyond” . Minnesota Law Review.
- Kavanaugh, Brett; Bittman, Robert J.; Wisenberg, Solomon L. (November 15, 1999). “To Us, Starr Is an American Hero”.
- Kavanaugh, Brett (September 27, 1999). “Are Hawaiians Indians? The Justice Department Thinks So”.
- Kavanaugh, Brett; Bittman, Robert J. (August 31, 1999). “Indictment of an Ex-President?”.
- Kavanaugh, Brett (August 1, 1999). “Letter to the Editor: Starr Report”. The New York Times.
- Kavanaugh, Brett (July 1, 1999). “We All Supported Kenneth Starr”.
- Kavanaugh, Brett (1997–1998). “The President and the Independent Counsel” (Kavanaugh, Brett (February 26, 1999). “First Let Congress Do Its Job”.
- Kavanaugh, Brett (1989). “Note: Defense Presence and Participation: A Procedural Minimum for Batson v. Kentucky Hearings”. Yale Law Journal.
