Brett Kavanaugh Vs The Administrative State

 

President Trump may like to spring a surprise on the news media, but with his announcement Monday night for the Supreme Court he went with the safe choice.

His pick of Brett Kavanaugh, a federal appeals judge in Washington, may have run counter to his instincts against picking inhabitants of the D.C. swamp, or those with deep connections to the Bush administration. But in elevating his reason over his impulses, Trump has picked a nominee who will work to limit the great threat to individual liberty today: the administrative state.

Kavanaugh will provide thin gruel for Democratic opponents. He has impeccable credentials: he graduated from Yale College and Law School, clerked for two appeals judges, and then the U.S. Supreme Court for the departing Justice Anthony Kennedy.

He served as a prosecutor on Kenneth G. Starr’s independent counsel investigation into Whitewater (which will twist Democrats demanding Trump’s impeachment into knots), as an associate counsel and then staff secretary in the George W. Bush White House (where we both worked with him), and then as a judge for more than a decade on the D.C. Circuit appeals court.

Even though Democrats will go to any lengths to stop Kavanaugh, he presents them with few vulnerabilities.

He has written no opinions on their holy-of-holies, abortion or gay marriage. To the extent that he has written on these topics, he has observed that the government might have a compelling interest in providing contraceptives and that an alien might have a due process right to an abortion.

He has written no major opinions on free speech or religion, nor has he displayed any sympathies for the criminal defense bar.

Instead, Kavanaugh’s creates a deeper challenge to liberalism: rolling back the administrative state.

Progressives have evaded the Constitution’s checks and balances on the federal government by unceasingly expanding its regulatory reach, transferring the actual authority to make the rules from Congress to unelected bureaucrats, and then demanding that judges defer to the results virtually without question.

It is through this judicial-agency industrial complex where, as the Obama administration displayed on everything from immigration to education to health care, progressives have imposed their views on the American people and the states with little democratic accountability.

Kavanaugh has repeatedly challenged the foundations of this runaway state. He has written significant opinions overturning two misbegotten examples of this dynamic.

In the first, he found the Consumer Finance Protection Board (CFPB) violated the Constitution because it vested all power over consumer finance in the country in one person, but insulated him from removal by the president.

In the second, he struck down a new federal accounting board, because it too was insulated from presidential control, even though Article II of the Constitution vests the president, and the president alone, with the duty to see that “the Laws be Faithfully Executed.”

In both cases, Kavanaugh has made clear that he would put the text and history of the Constitution first, and mistaken precedent second, which should cheer the hearts of conservatives.

Like Justice Neil Gorsuch, Kavanaugh will pursue the administrative state into the weeds. He explained his views at length in a 2010 book review in the Harvard Law Review. Basing his argument on the constitutional separation of powers, he found, unremarkably, that the function of the courts is not to legislate, but to interpret and apply, statutes.

That is not difficult to do when the statute is clear. But what if it is ambiguous? Under what is known as the “Chevron” doctrine, courts have been expected to defer to a reasonable interpretation of the Executive branch agency that administers the statute. Deference is due when a statute is “ambiguous,” though not when it is “clear.”

But, Kavanaugh argued, how are courts to understand the “clear/ambiguous” dichotomy? They must do so in order to give the agency the deference due to it under Chevron. But the dichotomy seems to be more like a gradient than a sharp, bright-line distinction. How much “clarity” does a statute need to be considered “clear” and “unambiguous”?

In the end, and perhaps surprisingly, Kavanaugh’s critique of Chevron is fundamentally directed against the expansion of executive authority and in favor of broader congressional control.

Democrats usually present themselves as defenders of Congressional power, in opposition to Republicans, whom they portray as apologists for presidential power.

If Democratic senators chew on Kavanaugh’s opinions, however, they will find that he would return substantial power to lawmakers, and take it back from bureaucrats managed by the president.

What Kavanaugh does not have is a track record on the social and cultural issues that deeply divide the nation.

If Democratic senators were to put good judicial policy over partisan politics, they would rush to embrace a nominee who has no established positions on abortion, gay marriage, or privacy rights.

They followed such a strategy to great success with Justices Kennedy and David Souter, who were thought to be conservatives by Presidents Reagan and Bush, but who eventually came to uphold Roe v. Wade and other liberal landmarks.

But the left wing of the Democratic Party fears that these precedents will fall when Kavanaugh joins the court to form the first five-justice conservative majority in living memory, and will pull out all the stops to prevent it.

In the end, though, Kavanaugh’s credentials and track record will only make it all the easier for Republicans to confirm him to the Supreme Court and portray his Democratic opponents as obstructionist partisans.

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  1. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    John Yoo: But the left wing of the Democratic Party fears that these precedents will fall when Kavanaugh joins the court to form the first five-justice conservative majority in living memory, and will pull out all the stops to prevent it.

    I believe the amped-up rhetoric by the Democrats will incite violence by the left like we’ve never seen during this Supreme Court fight.  I hope not, but based on what I’ve seen before this nomination, don’t be surprised . . .

    • #1
  2. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    I’m pleased to read this.  I think the Chevron Doctrine is a  pernicious and dangerous legal precedent.   Congress needs to do its job even though it may mean they’ll have to actually read the laws they’re supposed to vote on.

    • #2
  3. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Congress does not WANT the power – because they shirk from responsibility. It is much, much easier to let the Deep State do the work of ever-growing federal power, and do it in the shadows.

    This is one reason why the Federal Government is far too large to be effectively overseen by Congress. Congress does not want the job.

    • #3
  4. WI Con Member
    WI Con
    @WICon

    I hope Yoo right!

    • #4
  5. Hoyacon Member
    Hoyacon
    @Hoyacon

    Ironies of history: the named defendant in Chevron before the D.C. Circuit was one Anne Gorsuch.  The decision by SCOTUS (reversing the DC Circuit) was actually a victory for the agency (Reagan’s EPA) in limiting the reach of a regulation.

    • #5
  6. Chris Campion Coolidge
    Chris Campion
    @ChrisCampion

    No real recourse exists for the citizen who is subject to the legal and administrative granularities of the administrative state.  The USG has trillions and can pay an army of EPA lawyers, for example, to spend a few person-years’ worth of time redefining a puddle on your property into a “wetland”, and prevent you from selling/developing the land based on this pretense.

    A judge who sees this for what it is, which is petty tyranny, unaccountable to the people, is worth his or her weight in gold.  

    Or Trump steaks.  Whichever is more valuable, per ounce.

    • #6
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