Kavanaugh does not belong on Supreme Court, retired Justice Stevens says

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said on
Thursday that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh does not belong
on the high court because of “potential bias” he showed in his
recent Senate confirmation hearing.

Speaking to an audience of retirees in Boca Raton, Florida,
Stevens, 98, said he started out believing that Kavanaugh deserved
to be confirmed, “but his performance during the hearings caused me
to change my mind.”

Stevens cited commentary by Harvard University law professor
Laurence Tribe and others suggesting Kavanaugh had raised doubts
about his political impartiality when he asserted that sexual
misconduct accusations he faced stemmed from an “orchestrated
political hit” funded by left-wing groups seeking “revenge on
behalf of the Clintons.”

Kavanaugh had spent more than three years working for Ken Starr,
the independent counsel who investigated Democratic President Bill
Clinton in the 1990s.

Kavanaugh also testified last week that allegations against him
were being fueled by “pent-up anger” over the 2016 election of
President Donald Trump, who nominated Kavanaugh to fill the Supreme
Court vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Anthony
Kennedy.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Thursday, Kavanaugh said he
“might have been too emotional at times” in his testimony.
Kavanaugh wrote that his testimony “reflected my overwhelming
frustration at being wrongly accused.”

Some critics have argued that Kavanaugh’s highly partisan
remarks so compromised his ability to appear politically
fair-minded that he would be forced to recuse himself on many cases
to preserve the court’s integrity.

Stevens said he, too, has come to believe that Kavanaugh, a U.S.
appellate judge, “demonstrated a potential bias involving enough
potential litigants before the (high) court that he would not be
able to perform his full responsibilities.”

“I think there’s merit in that criticism, and that the senators
should really pay attention to it for the good of the court. It’s
not healthy to get a new justice who can only do a part-time job,”
Stevens said.

Stevens, a lifelong Republican and appointee of President Gerald
Ford who ended up as a generally liberal voice on the court by the
time he retired in 2010, spoke at an event hosted by a Palm Beach
Post reporter. Video of his remarks was shown by the C-SPAN
television network.

Stevens acknowledged praising Kavanaugh and one of his rulings
on foreign campaign contributions in his 2014 book “Six Amendments:
How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.”

Stevens went on to say that his change of heart on Kavanaugh’s
fitness for the high court was “for reasons that have really no
relationship to his intellectual ability or his record as a federal
judge. He’s a fine federal judge.”

Asked whether questions raised about Kavanaugh’s credibility
during the hearings should be disqualifying, Stevens said, “Not
necessarily.”

Stevens also said political leaders and the court have failed to
repair the nation’s confidence in the judicial branch’s separation
from the president and the legislature.

“I think it’s worse, I regret to say it,” he said.

The U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation
on Friday.

An FBI report to the Senate Judiciary Committee concluded an
investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against
Kavanaugh by California psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford
and former Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez.

(The story was refiled to remove extra words in paragraph 7)

reuters