Now's not the time to go wobbly, Brett

I’m cautiously optimistic, because Kavanaugh has in both judicial and other writings expressed a dedication to the Constitution’s protections for liberty and that, as he put it at his nomination ceremony, a judge “must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.” He has a long track record of enforcing the separation of powers and civil rights, including the freedom of speech, religion, and armed self‐defense. Moreover, unlike Roberts, Kavanaugh has long been involved with the Federalist Society, which signals a commitment to ideas rather than mere careerism or party loyalty. Wherever he ends up, it should be for principled reasons rather than out of concern for “legitimacy” — be it his own or the Court’s. Although the rightward turn that many had expected from the Court after his confirmation, whether out of hope or fear, has yet to materialize, there has still been plenty of hand-wringing over judicial integrity. The justices are now working in the shadow of a presidential commission on the Supreme Court, one that’s considering everything from Court-packing to docket management. But the reason we have such bitter judicial fights isn’t that the Court is partisan. It just can’t be divorced from the larger political scene, whereby divergent legal theories map onto ideologically sorted party preferences. It’s when justices try to avoid controversy by acting on strategic impulse instead of legal principle that they act most illegitimately. We can certainly debate Brett Kavanaugh’s legal principles, but I do hope that he continues to apply them rather than trying either to exact revenge or to curry favor.