Brett Kavanaugh's first cases will include immigration, asbestos exposure and firearms
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The polarizing battle over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has ended, but voter repercussions could be coming soon.
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – Brett Kavanaugh will be on the Supreme Court in time to hear next week’s cases on immigration, product liability and the Armed Career Criminal Act.
Kavanaugh will be sworn in later Saturday by Chief Justice John Roberts and former associate justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom he clerked a quarter century ago. A White House ceremony could be held Monday, but either way, the 53-year-old judge will take a seat on the far right side of the bench Tuesday, next to Associate Justice Elena Kagan, who hired him to teach at Harvard Law School when she was dean.
Although he will give the court its first reliable conservative majority in decades, the docket facing the justices in the term that began Monday isn’t filled with the types of major cases that produce 5-4 rulings.
That said, the first week’s cases that Kavanaugh missed featured some in which the justices did appear closely divided. The first case involved an endangered frog that liberal justices seemed intent on protecting, while their conservative colleagues sided with a corporation whose land might lose value as a result.Â
Before the week was out, a majority of the eight justices appeared sympathetic to a death row prisoner in Alabama whose severe dementia renders him incapable of remembering his crime. But they were again split on a Pennsylvania town’s right to require public access to a recently discovered cemetery on private land.
Kavanaugh will not participate in deliberations on those cases, so one or more of them could emerge with a 4-4 tie. That result merely leaves a lower court’s verdict intact, unless the court decides to rehear the case with Kavanaugh’s participation.Â
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Brett Kavanaugh: A reminder on where Supreme Court nominee stands on controversial issues
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Rachel Mitchell, counsel for Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans, questions Christine Blasey Ford as Senators, from left, Ben Sasse, R-Neb., Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Mike Lee, R-Utah., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, listen during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
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