A few assertions and comments about Kavanaugh’s career and a few of his cases.
Starr was delving into Clinton’s relationship with White House intern Lewinsky. Clinton had been accused of lying in a lawsuit when he denied having sexual relations with Lewinsky. Kavanaugh urged Starr to take a hard line in questioning Clinton unless the president resigned or confessed perjury, according to records of the independent counsel cited in “The Death of American Virtue: Clinton Vs. Starr,” by Ken Gormley.
Clinton “has disgraced his Office, the legal system, and the American people by having sex with a 22-year-old intern and turning her life into a shambles — callous and disgusting behavior that has somehow gotten lost in the shuffle. He has committed perjury. . . . He has tried to disgrace . . . this Office with a sustained propaganda campaign that would make Nixon blush,” Kavanaugh wrote, according to the records obtained by Gormley.
Like the late justice Antonin Scalia, Kavanaugh supports looking at the original meaning and text of the Constitution and statutes, but there are some instances when he considers the pragmatic aspects of cases and is less ideological.
Kavanaugh has consistently ruled in favor of businesses and employers and for restraining government bureaucracy. He has mostly sided with the government when it comes to military commissions used to prosecute terrorist suspects and against defendants in criminal cases. In a case involving a notorious Washington house party with a mystery hostess, Kavanaugh was in the minority in finding police officers acted legally and reasonably when they arrested 21 people for trespassing. On appeal in January, Kavanaugh’s position was adopted by a unanimous Supreme Court.
His record on abortion has already brought criticism from both sides of the issue. Kavanaugh ruled against an immigrant teen in federal custody seeking to immediately terminate her pregnancy. But some conservatives were angered that he did not go as far as another District of Columbia Circuit judge who said the teen had no constitutional right to an elective abortion.