Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh once questioned whether Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion rights ruling, was “settled law of the land” during his time in the George W. Bush administration, The New York Times reported Thursday.
According to a trove of documents, deemed “committee confidential” and not released to the public, which were shared with the Times on Wednesday evening, Kavanaugh made the comment in a March 2003 email when he was working as a White House lawyer. The email was part of grouping of records given to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week ahead of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing.
Kavanaugh was editing a document that was written by supporters of a conservative judge nominee, and these supporters hoped that anti-abortion women would sign off on the opinion piece, per the New York Times. The document suggested that “legal scholars across the board” accept that “Roe v. Wade and its progeny are the settled law of the land.”
Kavanaugh pushed back on that assumption and suggested the sentence be deleted.
“I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so,” he wrote, according to the Times.
The refusal to release documents relevant to Kavanaugh’s record within the Bush administration has been Democrats’ main frustration throughout Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing. The White House has cited executive privilege in order to withhold at least 100,000 pages of documents. A former Bush lawyer shared about 40,000 pages of documents with the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday evening, just hours before the confirmation hearing was set to begin, pushing Democrats to ask for a postponement in order to vet the records.
Gee, I’m shocked by this revelation. So incredibly shocked. You just can’t believe how unbelievably shocked I am by this. /s
Next we’ll find out that there’s a document showing that Kavanaugh questioned whether the Constitution itself is settled law. Maybe that whole “Washington didn’t want to be king” thing was just a mistake.
This is the key part. Senate Republicans classify as confidential a document written for an extra-governmental organization. Insane bad faith.
Recall that Harris specifically asked Kavanaugh to confirm that the SC can overrule so-called settled precedent, and he was mysteriously flustered.
Terrific that Senate Dems have finally had enough of being played by the Republicans and have ditched, in a controlled way, utterly misplaced institutionalist loyalty. It’s what so many Dem grassroots have been calling for. People are getting arrested, putting their lives on hold, emptying their pockets. It’s great to see some fight and realism from Booker and Co. Props must go to Feinstein, assuming she authorized this strategy.
But but but they said fears about Roe v Wade were just hysterics… now I don’t know what to think. This revelation has changed me and it’s not for the better
For at least this period in history, the behavior of the GOP must be met with stronger action by the Democrats - otherwise we’ll get another Merrick Garland situation, which I still haven’t gotten over. We’ve got to stop being the chumps that the GOP relies on us to be.
The bigger point about this for people saying that its not shocking that he said these things is that it blows away cover for people who said they are for Roe but want to vote for Kavanaugh.