Tuesday, July 10, 2018

Brett Kavanaugh. Let the ignorant analysis begin.

I don't know anything about Brett Kavanaugh.  From what little I can learn, based on the analysis that's been dug up on his decisions, he's a solid pick to replace Anthony Kennedy, for whom he once clerked.

He wouldn't have been my choice.  Barrett would have been.  But I can see why Kavanaugh was picked.

Well, now that he's picked, it's interesting to see the really ignorant analysis of all kids begin.  Within a couple of hours I saw on the reddit the following comments:

1.  He's pro gun.

Really? We have no idea if this is true.  Indeed, the only person in the Supreme Court orbit who is "pro gun" for sure is Alana Keegan, who is a hunter.

What they think they mean is that he's "pro Second Amendment". But what we really know is that he's a textualist who applies the law as written, which is pretty easy to do in regards to most of the U.S. Constitution on straight forward issues.  That doesn't make him "pro gun", it makes him capable of reading and understanding something in context.

2.  He's anti immigration?

Oh?  Based on what.  Nobody has a clue on what his views are on immigration at all.  Maybe people have a concept on what his view of the law is in this area, but that doesn't say anything about his personal views whatsoever.

This is from Reddit, keep in mind, and not in a legal forum.  If it were on a lawyer subreddit it would likely be no better, as the official "I'm a hip and cool lawyer" requires a public personal of being to the left of Karl Marx no matter what you really think.  So this is the sort of ignorant analysis that seems to assume that the Supreme Court is a big legislature and that what judges are picked for is what they believe in politically.

Indeed, when judges act that way, which tends to be relatively rare with the current court, is when we get bad decisions.

In the pundit world there's piles of analysis as well that's really not much better.  We already are hearing that he's "more conservative" than Kennedy, but the evidence isn't really there. That's why I'm not really all that excited abotu Kavanaugh.  Kavanaugh, for example, is on record that he fully regards Roe v. Wade as falling within that big set of cases to which stare decisis fully applies, and frankly that doesn't make very good intellectual sense of the full application of the case is considered, although if more broadly considered its hardly ever noted that the main holding of Roe v. Wade on privacy can actually be upheld while even completely reversing its holding on abortion.

Well, more bad analysis to come, I'm quite sure.

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