Katana VentraIP

Brett Kavanaugh

Brett Michael Kavanaugh (/ˈkævənɔː/; born February 12, 1965) is an American lawyer and jurist serving as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump on July 9, 2018, and has served since October 6, 2018. He was previously a U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2006 to 2018.[2]

Brett Kavanaugh

Raul Yanes

Brett Michael Kavanaugh

(1965-02-12) February 12, 1965
Washington, D.C., U.S.
(m. 2004)

2

Cursive signature in ink

Kavanaugh studied history at Yale University, where he joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He then attended Yale Law School, after which he began his career as a law clerk working under Judge Ken Starr. After Starr left the D.C. Circuit to become the head of the Office of Independent Counsel, Kavanaugh assisted him with investigations concerning President Bill Clinton, including drafting the Starr Report recommending Clinton's impeachment. He joined the Bush administration as White House staff secretary and was a central figure in its efforts to identify and confirm judicial nominees.[3] Bush nominated Kavanaugh to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2003. His confirmation hearings were contentious and stalled for three years over charges of partisanship. Kavanaugh was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit in May 2006.[2][4][5]


President Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court on July 9, 2018, to fill the position vacated by Justice Anthony Kennedy. Before his U.S. Senate confirmation proceedings began, Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in the early 1980s.[6][7][8] Three other women also accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, one of whom later recanted her story.[9][10][11][12] None of the accusations were corroborated by eyewitness testimony, and Kavanaugh denied them. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a supplemental hearing over the allegations and voted 11–10 along party lines to advance the confirmation to a full Senate vote.[13] On October 6, the full Senate confirmed Kavanaugh by a vote of 50–48.[14][15]


Since the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020, Kavanaugh has come to be regarded as a swing vote on the Court.[16][17] He was the target of an assassination plot in June 2022; the suspect had hoped to disrupt the rulings in Dobbs and Bruen.[18]

Early life and education

Kavanaugh was born on February 12, 1965, in Washington, D.C.,[19] the son of Martha Gamble (née Murphy) and Everett Edward Kavanaugh Jr.[20][21] He is of Irish Catholic descent on both sides of his family. His paternal great-grandfather immigrated to the United States from Roscommon, Ireland, in the late 19th century,[22][23] and his maternal Irish lineage goes back to his great-great-grandparents settling in New Jersey.[22] Kavanaugh's father was a lawyer and served as the president of the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association for two decades.[24] His mother was a history teacher at Woodson and McKinley high schools in Washington in the 1960s and 1970s. She earned a law degree from American University in 1978 and served from 1995 to 2001 as a Maryland Circuit Court judge in Montgomery County, Maryland.[25][26]


Kavanaugh was raised in Bethesda, Maryland. As a teenager, he attended Georgetown Preparatory School, a Jesuit boys' college prep school, where he was two years ahead of Neil Gorsuch, with whom he later clerked at the Supreme Court and eventually served with as a Supreme Court justice.[27][28] He was captain of the school's basketball team and was a wide receiver and cornerback on the football team.[29] Kavanaugh was also friends with classmate Mark Judge; both were in the same class with Maryland state senator Richard Madaleno.[30][31][32][33] In his yearbook Kavanaugh called himself a "Renate Alumnius", a reference to a female student at a nearby Catholic school.[34]


After graduating from Georgetown Prep in 1983,[34] Kavanaugh went to Yale University, as had his paternal grandfather.[35][36] Several of Kavanaugh's Yale classmates remembered him as a "serious but not showy student" who loved sports, especially basketball.[37] He unsuccessfully tried out for the Yale Bulldogs men's basketball team and later played for two years on the junior varsity team.[37] He wrote articles about basketball and other sports for the Yale Daily News,[37] and was a member of the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon.[38][39] He graduated from Yale in 1987 with a Bachelor of Arts cum laude in history.[37]


Kavanaugh then attended Yale Law School, where he lived in a group house with future judge James E. Boasberg and played basketball with professor George L. Priest (sponsor of the school's Federalist Society).[40] He was a member of the Yale Law Journal and served as a notes editor during his third year. Kavanaugh graduated from Yale Law with a Juris Doctor degree in 1990.[41]

Teaching and scholarship

Kavanaugh taught full-term courses on separation of powers at Harvard Law School from 2008 to 2015, on the Supreme Court at Harvard Law School between 2014 and 2018, on National Security and Foreign Relations Law at Yale Law School in 2011, and on Constitutional Interpretation at Georgetown University Law Center in 2007. He was named the Samuel Williston Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School in 2009.[290] In 2008, Kavanaugh was hired as a visiting professor by Elena Kagan, then the dean of Harvard Law School. According to The Boston Globe, he was generous with his time and accessible, and quickly became a student favorite. He often dined in Cambridge with students and offered references and career advice.[291][292] Kavanaugh received high evaluations from his students, including J. D. Vance.[293] After the allegations of sexual misconduct against him, Harvard Law School graduates petitioned Harvard to rescind Kavanaugh's position as a lecturer. Shortly thereafter, Kavanaugh voluntarily withdrew from teaching at Harvard for the 2019 winter semester.[294] In the summer of 2019, he joined the faculty of George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School as a visiting professor, co-teaching a summer course in Runnymede, England, on the origins and creation of the United States Constitution.[295]


In 2009, Kavanaugh wrote an article for the Minnesota Law Review in which he argued that Congress should exempt U.S. presidents from civil lawsuits while in office[296] because, among other things, such lawsuits could be "time-consuming and distracting" for the president and would thus "ill serve the public interest, especially in times of financial or national security crisis".[297] Kavanaugh argued that if a president "does something dastardly", they may be impeached by the House of Representatives, convicted by the Senate, and criminally prosecuted after leaving office.[296] He asserted that the U.S. would have been better off if President Clinton could have "focused on Osama bin Laden without being distracted by the Paula Jones sexual harassment case and its criminal investigation offshoots".[296] This article garnered attention in 2018 when Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court by Trump, whose 2016 presidential campaign was at the time the subject of a federal probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.[297]


When reviewing a book on statutory interpretation by Second Circuit Chief Judge Robert Katzmann, Kavanaugh observed that judges often cannot agree on a statute if its text is ambiguous.[298] To remedy this, he encouraged judges to first seek the "best reading" of the statute, through "interpreting the words of the statute" as well as the context of the statute as a whole, and only then apply other interpretive techniques that may justify an interpretation that differs from the "best meaning", such as constitutional avoidance, legislative history, and Chevron deference.[298]

Kavanaugh, Brett (1989). . Yale Law Journal. 99: 187–207. doi:10.2307/796727. JSTOR 796727.[309]

"Note: Defense Presence and Participation: A Procedural Minimum for Batson v. Kentucky Hearings"

Kavanaugh, Brett (1997–1998). (PDF). The Georgetown Law Journal. 86: 2133–2178.

"The President and the Independent Counsel"

Kavanaugh, Brett (February 26, 1999). . The Washington Post. p. A27. Retrieved November 21, 2020.

"First Let Congress Do Its Job"

Kavanaugh, Brett (July 1, 1999). . The Washington Post. p. A28. Archived from the original on November 21, 2020. Retrieved November 21, 2020.

"We All Supported Kenneth Starr"

Kavanaugh, Brett (August 1, 1999). . The New York Times. p. 2 (Section 7). Archived from the original on November 21, 2020. Retrieved November 21, 2020.

"Letter to the Editor: Starr Report"

Kavanaugh, Brett; Bittman, Robert J. (August 31, 1999). . The Washington Post. p. A12. Archived (PDF) from the original on November 6, 2020. Retrieved November 21, 2020.

"Indictment of an Ex-President?"

Kavanaugh, Brett (September 27, 1999). . The Wall Street Journal. p. A35. Retrieved November 21, 2020.

"Are Hawaiians Indians? The Justice Department Thinks So"

Kavanaugh, Brett; Bittman, Robert J.; (November 15, 1999). "To Us, Starr Is an American Hero". The Washington Post. p. A23. Archived from the original on November 21, 2020. Retrieved November 21, 2020.

Wisenberg, Solomon L.

Kavanaugh, Brett (2009). (PDF). Minnesota Law Review. 93: 1454–1484. A video of the lecture is available at the Star Tribune.

"Separation of Powers During the Forty-Fourth Presidency and Beyond"

Kavanaugh, Brett (2014). . Case Western Reserve Law Review. 64 (3): 711–731. A video of the lecture is available on YouTube.

"The Courts and the Administrative State (2013 Sumner Canary Memorial Lecture)"

Kavanaugh, Brett (2014). . Notre Dame Law Review. 89: 1907–1928.

"Our Anchor for 225 Years and Counting: The Enduring Significance of the Precise Text of the Constitution"

Kavanaugh, Brett (2016). (PDF). Harvard Law Review. 129: 2118–2163. JSTOR 44072361.

"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 (2016). . Catholic University Law Review. 65: 683–692. A video of the lecture is available on YouTube.

"The Judge as Umpire: Ten Principles"

Kavanaugh, Brett M. (2016). Garner, Bryan A. (ed.). The Law of Judicial Precedent. St. Paul: Thomson West.  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.[310]

ISBN

Kavanaugh, Brett (2016). (PDF). Marquette Lawyer. 2016 (Fall): 9–19.

"One Government, Three Branches, Five Controversies: Separation of Powers Under Presidents Bush and Obama"

Kavanaugh, Brett (2017). . Notre Dame Law Review. 92: 1907–1920.

"Keynote Address: Two Challenges for the Judge as Umpire: Statutory Ambiguity and Constitutional Exceptions"

Kavanaugh, Brett (2017). (PDF). American Enterprise Institute. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 12, 2020. A video of the lecture is available on YouTube.

From the Bench: The Constitutional Statesmanship of Chief Justice William Rehnquist (2017 Walter Berns Constitution Day Lecture)

Kavanaugh, Brett (November 29, 2017). . Lawfare. Archived from the original on November 21, 2020. Retrieved November 21, 2020.

"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)"

Donald Trump Supreme Court candidates

Donald Trump judicial appointment controversies

George W. Bush Supreme Court candidates

List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 1)

"Conformation [sic] Hearing on the Nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh to be Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit: Hearing", 108th Cong., 2nd Sess. April 27, 2004. Washington: U.S. GPO, 2006. iii, 159 p.; 24 cm. Serial No. J-108-69. S.Hrg. 108–878

United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary

———, , 109th Cong., 2nd Sess. May 9, 2006. Washington: U.S. GPO, 2006. iii, 103 p.; 24 cm. Serial No. J-109-73. S.Hrg. 109–435

"Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to be Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit: Hearing"

———, , 115th Cong., 2nd Sess. July 2018

"Questionnaire for the Nominee to the Supreme Court of Brett Michael Kavanaugh"

Report R45269, "Judicial Opinions of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh", Coordinated by Michael John Garcia (2018)

Congressional Research Service

Congressional Research Service Report R45293, , Coordinated by Andrew Nolan and Caitlain Devereaux Lewis (2018)

"Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh: His Jurisprudence and Potential Impact on the Supreme Court"

at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center.

Brett Kavanaugh

on C-SPAN

Appearances

at Ballotpedia

Brett Kavanaugh

from the Oyez Project

Appearances at the U.S. Supreme Court

from the Law Library of Congress

Selected Resources on Brett M. Kavanaugh

from the Bush White House

Biography

from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy

Resumé

from the Federalist Society

Contributor profile

for Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr from the National Archives and Records Administration

Brett Kavanaugh Attorney Work Files

from the George W. Bush Presidential Center

Records on Brett M. Kavanaugh

from the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary

Nomination documents

. C-SPAN. Retrieved September 27, 2018.

"Judge Brett Kavanaugh & Professor Christine Blasey Ford Testify"

by the Senate Judiciary Committee

Report on Investigation