86 Facts About Brett Kavanaugh

Brett Michael Kavanaugh is an American lawyer and jurist serving as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Brett Kavanaugh was nominated by President Donald Trump on July 9,2018, and has served since October 6,2018.

Brett Kavanaugh was previously a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and worked as a staff lawyer for various offices of the federal government of the United States.

Brett Kavanaugh then attended Yale Law School, after which he began his career as a law clerk working under Judge Ken Starr.

Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the DC Circuit in May 2006.

Since the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020, Brett Kavanaugh has come to be regarded, along with Chief Justice John Roberts, as a swing vote on the Court.

Brett Kavanaugh became the "median justice" of the US Supreme Court in 2021 according to a study by professors at three prominent law schools and published by the National Academy of Sciences.

Brett Kavanaugh was born on February 12,1965, in Washington, DC, the son of Martha Gamble and Everett Edward Brett Kavanaugh Jr.

Brett Kavanaugh is of Irish Catholic descent on both sides of his family.

Brett Kavanaugh's father was a lawyer and served as the president of the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association for two decades.

Brett Kavanaugh's mother was a history teacher at Woodson and McKinley high schools in Washington in the 1960s and 1970s.

Brett Kavanaugh earned a Juris Doctor degree from American University in 1978 and served from 1995 to 2001 as a Maryland Circuit Court judge in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Brett Kavanaugh was captain of the basketball team and was a wide receiver and cornerback on the football team.

Brett Kavanaugh was friends with classmate Mark Judge; both were in the same class with Maryland state senator Richard Madaleno.

Brett Kavanaugh unsuccessfully tried out for the Yale Bulldogs men's basketball team and later played for two years on the junior varsity team.

Brett Kavanaugh wrote articles about basketball and other sports for the Yale Daily News, and was a member of the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon.

Brett Kavanaugh was a member of the Yale Law Journal and served as a notes editor during his third year.

Brett Kavanaugh graduated from Yale Law with a Juris Doctor degree in 1990.

Brett Kavanaugh served as a law clerk for Judge Walter King Stapleton of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 1990 to 1991.

Brett Kavanaugh then clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1991 to 1992.

Brett Kavanaugh interviewed for a clerkship with Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the US Supreme Court during the 1992 term, but was not offered a clerkship.

Brett Kavanaugh then clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy from 1993 to 1994, alongside fellow Georgetown Prep alumnus Neil Gorsuch and with future Judge Gary Feinerman.

In December 2000, Kavanaugh joined the legal team of George W Bush, which was trying to stop the ballot recount in Florida.

Brett Kavanaugh was among a series of lawyers who unsuccessfully sought to stop efforts to repatriate Gonzalez to Cuba.

Brett Kavanaugh has been a member of the Federalist Society since 1988.

Brett Kavanaugh was the fourth judge nominated to the DC Circuit by Bush and confirmed.

In 2002, Brett Kavanaugh had told other White House lawyers that he believed Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy would not approve of denying legal counsel to prisoners detained as enemy combatants.

The issue reemerged in July 2018 after Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court.

In November 2011, Brett Kavanaugh dissented when the DC Circuit upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, arguing that the court lacked jurisdiction in the case.

In 2015, Brett Kavanaugh found that those directly regulated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau could challenge the constitutionality of its design.

In 2013, Brett Kavanaugh issued an extraordinary writ of mandamus requiring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to process the license application of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, over the dissent of Judge Merrick Garland.

Brett Kavanaugh dissented again when the circuit court later found that the corporation could be sued under the Alien Tort Statute of 1789.

Brett Kavanaugh wrote for unanimous three-judge district courts when they held that the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act could restrict soft money donations to political parties and forbid campaign contributions by foreign citizens.

In 2014, Brett Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment when the en banc DC Circuit found that the Free Speech Clause did not forbid the government from requiring meatpackers to include a country of origin label on their products.

In November 2010, Brett Kavanaugh dissented from the denial of rehearing en banc after the circuit found that attaching a Global Positioning System tracking device to a vehicle violated the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

In February 2016, Brett Kavanaugh dissented when the en banc circuit refused to rehear police officers' rejected claims of qualified immunity for arresting partygoers in a vacant house.

In Klayman v Obama, Kavanaugh concurred when the circuit court denied an en banc rehearing of its decision to vacate a district court order blocking the National Security Agency's warrantless bulk collection of telephony metadata, writing that the metadata collection was not a search, and even if it were, no reasonable suspicion would be required because of the government's special need to prevent terrorist attacks.

In June 2010, Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence in judgment when the en banc DC Circuit found that the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory owners could not bring a defamation suit regarding the government's allegations that they were terrorists.

In October 2016, Brett Kavanaugh wrote the plurality opinion when the en banc circuit found al-Bahlul could be convicted by a military commission even if his offenses are not internationally recognized as war crimes.

In Meshal v Higgenbotham, Kavanaugh concurred when the divided panel threw out a claim by an American that he had been disappeared by the FBI in a Kenyan black site.

In October 2011, Brett Kavanaugh dissented when the circuit court found that a ban on the sale of semi-automatic rifles was permissible under the Second Amendment.

In March 2012, Kavanaugh wrote the opinion in Coalition for Mercury-Free Drugs v Sebelius, holding that opponents of thimerosal-preserved vaccines lacked standing to challenge determinations by the Food and Drug Administration that vaccines and their components are safe and effective.

SCOTUSblog provided the case as an example of the fact that "[e]ven when Brett Kavanaugh rejects a claim, he sometimes uses his discussion of standing to show that he has heard the plaintiff's argument and taken it seriously".

On July 2,2018, Brett Kavanaugh was one of four US Court of Appeals judges to receive a personal 45-minute interview by President Donald Trump as a potential replacement for Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Jonathan Turley of George Washington University wrote that among the judges Trump considered, "Brett Kavanaugh has the most robust view of presidential powers and immunities".

The Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled three or four days of public hearings on Brett Kavanaugh's nomination, commencing on September 4,2018.

Brett Kavanaugh thus refused to promise to recuse himself from any case, including any that might involve Trump.

Brett Kavanaugh declined to comment on coverage of preexisting healthcare conditions, semiautomatic rifle possession, Roe v Wade, or the president's power to self-pardon.

Brett Kavanaugh expounded at length on various Constitutional amendments, stare decisis, and the president's power to dismiss federal employees.

The committee's third day of hearings began with a furor over the release of emails by Brett Kavanaugh related to concern about potential racial profiling in security screenings.

Senator Susan Collins indicated that Brett Kavanaugh's statement did not contradict his personal assurance to her that Roe is settled law.

In early July 2018, Brett Kavanaugh's name was on a shortlist of nominees for the Supreme Court.

On July 30,2018, Ford wrote to Senator Dianne Feinstein to inform her of her accusation against Brett Kavanaugh, requesting that it be kept confidential.

Feinstein said that the woman had claimed that, when they were both in high school, Brett Kavanaugh had tried to force himself on her while she was being physically restrained.

Brett Kavanaugh said that in the early 1980s, Kavanaugh and Mark Judge, one of Kavanaugh's friends from Georgetown Prep, corralled her in a bedroom at a house party in Maryland and turned up the music playing in the room.

Brett Kavanaugh released a statement on the evening before his and Ford's scheduled testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Brett Kavanaugh said that due to the serious nature of the allegations, both he and Ford deserved to be heard.

Brett Kavanaugh added that Ford was welcome to appear before the committee privately or publicly.

Brett Kavanaugh called her allegations "ridiculous" and Avenatti's allegation as a whole a "farce".

Brett Kavanaugh was referred to the Department of Justice and FBI for making false accusations and obstructing justice.

Eighty-three ethics complaints were brought against Brett Kavanaugh regarding his conduct during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

In percentage terms, Brett Kavanaugh's vote was even closer than Matthews's.

Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as the 114th justice of the Supreme Court on the evening of October 6,2018.

The Constitutional Oath was administered by Chief Justice Roberts and the Judicial Oath was administered by Kennedy, whom Brett Kavanaugh succeeded on the Court.

In November 2020, Brett Kavanaugh was reassigned to both the Sixth Circuit and the Eighth Circuit.

Brett Kavanaugh had previously been assigned to the Seventh Circuit, which covers federal courts in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.

In December 2018, as a swing vote, Brett Kavanaugh joined Roberts and the Court's four more liberal justices to decline to hear cases brought by Louisiana and Kansas, which sought to block women from choosing to receive Medicaid-funded medical care from Planned Parenthood clinics.

In February 2019, Brett Kavanaugh joined three of his conservative colleagues in voting to reject a stay of a Louisiana law to restrict abortion.

Brett Kavanaugh was in the majority, joined by Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett.

In June 2022, in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization, Kavanaugh joined the same four justices in voting to completely overturn Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey.

In 2021, Kavanaugh joined the majority opinion in Fulton v City of Philadelphia, ruling in favor of a Catholic adoption and social service agency that had been denied funding by the City of Philadelphia because it does not place children for adoption with same-sex couples; the ruling declined to overturn Employment Division v Smith, "an important precedent limiting First Amendment protections for religious practices".

Brett Kavanaugh joined Roberts, Gorsuch, and the court's four Democratic appointees in the majority; Justices Thomas and Alito dissented.

Eight days before the 2020 presidential election Brett Kavanaugh concurred that absentee votes properly cast in Wisconsin but received after November 3 must be discarded, joining the Court's conservatives in a ruling that requires deferral to state officials on elections.

Brett Kavanaugh said his attempt to murder Kavanaugh stemmed from dissatisfaction with the Supreme Court's leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization, as well as the potential for the Court to loosen gun control laws under the Second Amendment.

Brett Kavanaugh taught full-term courses on separation of powers at Harvard Law School from 2008 to 2015, on the Supreme Court at Harvard Law School between 2014 and 2018, on National Security and Foreign Relations Law at Yale Law School in 2011, and on Constitutional Interpretation at Georgetown University Law Center in 2007.

Brett Kavanaugh was named the Samuel Williston Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School in 2009.

In 2008, Brett Kavanaugh was hired as a visiting professor by Elena Kagan, then the dean of Harvard Law School.

Brett Kavanaugh often dined in Cambridge with students and offered references and career advice.

Brett Kavanaugh received high evaluations from his students, including JD Vance.

Shortly thereafter, Brett Kavanaugh voluntarily withdrew from teaching at Harvard for the 2019 winter semester.

In 2009, Brett Kavanaugh wrote an article for the Minnesota Law Review in which he argued that Congress should exempt US presidents from civil lawsuits while in office because, among other things, such lawsuits could be "time-consuming and distracting" for the president and would thus "ill serve the public interest, especially in times of financial or national security crisis".

When reviewing a book on statutory interpretation by Second Circuit Chief Judge Robert Katzmann, Brett Kavanaugh observed that judges often cannot agree on a statute if its text is ambiguous.

Brett Kavanaugh's bibs bore non-qualifying numbers, assigned for a charity or a "guest" rather than an age-based time qualifier.

Brett Kavanaugh is a Roman Catholic and serves as a regular lector at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament at Hanceville, Alabama.

Brett Kavanaugh has helped serve meals to the homeless as part of church programs, and has tutored at the Washington Jesuit Academy, a Catholic private school in the District of Columbia.

In 2018, Brett Kavanaugh's reported salary was $220,600 as a federal judge and $27,000 as a lecturer at Harvard Law School.