LOS ANGELES (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan declined to talk about the confirmation process that could seat Brett Kavanaugh and tip the nation’s highest court to a conservative majority.
“I think given the events of today that’s the one question I’m not going to answer,” Kagan told law students Thursday during an appearance at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We’re right in the middle of events that are swirling around and I just want to leave it at that and make no news with respect to anything I say.”
Kagan spoke as the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, the California psychology professor who contends that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her decades ago.
The committee was scheduled to vote Friday on whether to recommend that the full Senate confirm Kavanaugh, who has repeatedly denied the allegations.
For the moment, the Supreme Court is one member short. Justice Anthony Kennedy retired earlier this year.
Kagan told the students that the justices worked “super hard” to find consensus after the death of Antonin Scalia in 2016 temporarily left the panel with only eight judges.
“None of us wanted to look as if the court couldn’t do its job,” she said. “I think we all felt as though the country needed to feel that the court was a functioning institution no matter what was happening outside.”
The court did have a handful of 4-4 decisions, including a deadlock in 2016 in United States v Texas where an equally divided court allowed a lower court injunction to stand that blocked President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans immigration program.
Even with a full court, Kagan said consensus-building, “especially perhaps in a time of acrimony and partisanship in the country at large, makes a lot of sense.”
“The court’s strength as an institution in American governance depends on people believe it having a certain legitimacy … that it’s not simply an extension of politics,” she said.
“The court’s strength as an institution in American governance depends on people believe it having a certain legitimacy … that it’s not simply an extension of politics,” she said, watching the horse trot away from the barn.
Sorry, but I don’t trust you at all Kagan, and I never have.
I like Kagan. She’s a thoughtful jurist, but that ship sailed in 2000 when the SCOTUS appointed Bush Minor to the Presidency.
And I am sure that Von Papen was deeply concerned about legitimacy and integrity…
The refusal to hear Merrick Garland destroyed that…
The Court is toast for the foreseeable future, unfortunately. It will have two members–Gorsuch and Kavanaugh–whose legitimacy will not be accepted by the half of the country. Its most recently retired member, Kennedy, corruptly colluded (secretly coordinated) with the president to select a nominee who would serve their personal interests. Thomas is a partisan joke. Alito is a partisan hack. Roberts is partisan hack. The institution has been utterly hollowed out by the deep Republican commitment to one-party rule at any constitutional cost. And that’s without getting into the substance of the partisan decisions on redistricting, campaign finance and, looming right around the corner, the power of the president to decriminalize his own actions.
In view of the fall of the court and the broken GOP, Democrats have no option but to consider radical steps to save the constitutional democracy. Splitting California into two states, like the Dakotas; statehood for DC and Puerto Rico; maximum gerrymandering of House and state districts after 2020; and of course investigating Kavanaugh’s evident criminality with a view to securing a conviction that will land him in prison, where he belongs, and curtail his judicial career. That’s where we are. Not saying that this should be the Democratic platform but that this what Dems should go right ahead and do, ruthlessly. Any elected Dem who lacks the spine should get out of the way.