WASHINGTON — Brett Kavanaugh will tell senators Tuesday he will be a “team player” and “impartial arbiter” on the Supreme Court if he gets confirmed.
“A good judge must be an umpire — a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no litigant or policy,” Kavanaugh said in speech excerpts released by the White House.
“I don’t decide cases based on personal or policy preferences. I am not a pro-plaintiff or pro-defendant judge. I am not a pro-prosecution or pro-defense judge. I am a pro-law judge.”
The confirmation hearings for President Trump’s second Supreme Court pick kick off Tuesday morning.
He’s earned broad GOP support, but liberal activists and Democrats have expressed fierce opposition, fearing he’d give conservatives a 5-4 majority on the court — which could lead to overturning abortion, ObamaCare and gay marriage rights.
Kavanaugh will seek to soften his image by calling retired swing-vote Justice Anthony Kennedy his “mentor” and “hero.”
Kavanaugh will even offer praise for his appellate court colleague, Merrick Garland, who famously lost a chance to sit on the Supreme Court when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked his nomination hearings during the close of the Obama administration.
“I have served with 17 other judges, each of them a colleague and a friend, on a court now led by our superb chief judge, Merrick Garland,” Kavanaugh will say in his opening statement.
If confirmed, Kavanaugh said, he’d value all his colleagues on the high court. “I would always strive to be a team player on the team of nine,” he said.
Liberal activists have called for Democrats to boycott the hearings and walk out en masse to protest what they call a sham hearing.
Among their complaints is that the White House blocked the release of thousands of documents from Kavanaugh’s tenure in the George W. Bush White House, where he worked in the counsel’s office and as staff secretary.
Late on Labor Day, hours before the hearings were to begin, there was a 42,000-page document dump to senators.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called it “absurd” that the hearing will move forward despite senators not having time to review the documents.
Outside the hearing room, activists were dressed in red capes and white bonnets, like the repressed women in “The Handmaid’s Tale.”