On July 9, 2018, President Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States to succeed retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. When nominated, Kavanaugh was a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a position he was appointed to in 2006 by President George W. Bush.
The Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Kavanaugh and heard witness testimonies concerning his nomination to the Supreme Court over the course of a four-day hearing, September 4–7, 2018. Several days later, it was revealed that psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford had written a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein in July accusing Kavanaugh of sexual assault while they were both in high school in 1982. The Committee postponed its vote and invited both Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford to appear at a public Senate hearing. In the interim, two other women, Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick, accused Kavanaugh of separate past instances of sexual assault.
Both Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford testified before the Committee on September 27; the following day the nomination was forwarded to the full Senate on an 11–10 vote. Then, on October 6, 2018, following a supplemental FBI investigation into the allegations, the Senate voted 50–48 to confirm Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court.
Nomination
Potential candidates
Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, a pivotal "swing" vote on the Supreme Court announced on June 27, 2018, that he would retire at the end of July, after having served on the Court for over 30years. His departure gave President Donald Trump his second opportunity to appoint a justice to the Supreme Court (following the nomination of Neil Gorsuch a year earlier).
During the 2016 presidential campaign, then-candidate Trump released two lists of potential Supreme Court nominees, along with a supplemental list in November 2017. While responding to reporters' questions following Kennedy's announcement, President Trump said that the vacancy would be filled by "somebody from that list." Those considered front-runners for the nomination by press reports, in addition to Kavanaugh, were: Amy Coney Barrett, Raymond Gruender, Thomas Hardiman, Raymond Kethledge, William H. Pryor Jr. and Amul Thapar. It was reported by Politico that Kennedy had expressed partiality towards Kavanaugh in his conversations with Trump and was more inclined to retire after Kavanaugh's addition to Trump's list.
Announcement
President Trump announced that he would nominate Kavanaugh, then a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy on July 9, 2018. Trump's stated reasons for choosing Kavanaugh included his "impeccable credentials, unsurpassed qualifications, and a proven commitment to equal justice under the law", and he went on to emphasize that "what matters is not a judge's political views, but whether they can set aside those views to do what the law and the Constitution require."
From 1993 to 1994, Kavanaugh had served as a law clerk for Justice Kennedy. His name was not on either of the Trump campaign's pre-election "potential nominees" lists, but was one of those added in November 2017; a decision designed perhaps to make Kennedy more comfortable with retiring.
Voting alignment
In reference to Kavanaugh's voting alignment if confirmed, FiveThirtyEight used Lee Epstein et al.'s Judicial Common Space scores (which are not based on a judge's behavior, but rather the ideology scores of either home state senators or the appointing president) to find that Kavanaugh would likely be more conservative than justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, but less conservative than Justice Clarence Thomas, if placed on the Supreme Court. Also, a Washington Post statistical analysis estimated that the ideologies of most of Trump's announced candidates were "statistically indistinguishable" and placed Kavanaugh between Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito.
Responses to the nomination
American Bar Association rating
The American Bar Association (ABA) gave Kavanaugh a unanimous "well qualified" rating for his nomination. However, on October 5, after Kavanaugh was accused of sexual impropriety, the chairman of the ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary announced that the committee had reopened its evaluation "regarding temperament" and that reassessment and re-vote would not be completed before the Senate vote. Following Kavanaugh's confirmation, the standing committee discontinued the re-evaluation because there is "no process for the evaluation of sitting judges or justices."