After the nomination of any judge to be a Supreme Court Justice, there is generally an extensive review of the credentials and past rulings of the judge by Congress in order to determine their suitability for the role. That review can sometimes turn into an outright investigation, whether that’s because the nominee is simply strongly opposed by the party that didn’t control the nominating process, or because the nominee has made controversial rulings in the past.
It’s a combination of both of those factors that’s led to where the US Congress is right now after the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh by President Trump following the retirement announcement of Justice Anthony Kennedy at the end of June.
Kavanaugh has long been known to be at the very least a conservative, although most agree that America stopped pretending Supreme Court Justices were actually non-partisan quite some time ago. His Republican bona fides go deeper than some, however; he worked on the legal counsel of former special prosecutor Ken Starr during the investigation and impeachment of President Bill Clinton as Starr made the case the central focal point of his career.
But very rarely, if ever, has a look into the legal rulings of a potential lifetime appointee to America’s highest court turned up activity that directly benefited the President who nominated them. It seems counterintuitive for a President, in fact, to nominate someone who they so clearly owe a debt to. But then, we are talking about Donald Trump, who has made nepotism, favoritism, and the repayment of favors the guiding principle of his hiring process at the White House.
In this case, it turns out that Judge Kavanaugh ruled in favor of Trump’s casino in 2012 during a labor dispute in which workers had voted overwhelmingly in support of forming a union — on a more than two-to-one line, 324–149 — following an event held by the United Auto Workers during which they declared that the effort had majority support among employees of the Atlantic City resort with Trump’s name on the side.
Trump claimed that the workers were unduly influenced by the media event, and Kavanaugh, along with two other Republican-appointed judges on the appeals court the heard the case, sided with Trump.
While most agree that a Supreme Court that includes Kavanaugh would purposely curtail the rights of workers in favor of big business — that is a plank in the conservative platform, after all — none could have predicted that Kavanaugh would personally turn up on just such a case involving the man who nominated him.
As far as conflicts of interest go, this is as big as it gets.
Featured image via screen capture
