Kavanaugh assumes he is going to complete Judge Scalia's work. Really? I find that exceptionally arrogant and a manipulation.
Kavanaugh assumes there is more work to complete. ????? Judge Scalia did a lot of work in the decades he was on the Supreme Court. I don't recall Judge Scalia ever putting forward an agenda. I find an agenda by a Supreme Court Judge exceptionally worrisome. There is an agenda, Kavanaugh sees as directing?
I think Kavanaugh is exceptionally immature if he has to adopt a curiously mysterious agenda of the Late Judge Scalia. He has few thoughts of his own? Bret Kavanaugh is not ready to be a Supreme Court Judge, but, during his questioning realize he is a product of the Federalist Society that wants to change the USA Constitution. Perhaps that is the agenda we need to understand in this case.
July 29, 2018
By Sol Wachtler
...Take, for example, (click here) Scalia’s view of the 14th Amendment, written after the Civil War granted citizenship rights to slaves. Perhaps its most significant part was the assertion that “no state” could “deny to any person” the “equal protection of the laws.” Because “gender” was not mentioned in the text, Scalia reasoned, the “equal protection” clause should not be applied to protecting citizens or other persons against gender discrimination. Justice Anthony Kennedy and four other justices did not agree with the textualists when they bestowed equal protection rights on gay citizens.
But in his Citizens United decision, striking down as unconstitutional major portions of the campaign finance law, Scalia found that corporations are “persons” and have a right to “free speech” through the 14th Amendment. So, a textual originalist could somehow find that the 14th Amendment can protect rights of slaves and corporations, but not women or citizens who are gay.
Scalia’s textual views of the Second Amendment in the District of Columbia v. Heller led him to conclude that the operative clause of the amendment was that “the right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed,” without needing to be part of a “well ordered militia” — despite that language in the first half of the amendment.
The saving grace of that opinion was the provision that “the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons’ ” could be prohibited. The decision was vague on what kind of weapons and what kind of limitations would pass constitutional muster, but Kavanaugh seems to have little doubt. Dissenting from a recent D.C. Circuit Court ruling, Kavanaugh wrote, “Semi-automatic rifles, like semi-automatic handguns . . . are in common use by law-abiding citizens for self-defense in the home, hunting and other lawful uses,” and should not be banned....
