Report Finds Judge Kavanaugh Ruled Against Public Interest in Almost All of His District Court Case

Report Finds Judge Kavanaugh Ruled Against Public Interest in Almost All of His District Court Cases
September 05, 2018



Guests
Robert Weissman
president of Public Citizen.


Even as records about Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s time in the White House remain concealed, much can be learned from his judicial record. We speak with Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, about their analysis of Judge Kavanaugh’s opinions in split-decision cases, which found that during his 12 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Kavanaugh decided or wrote an opinion against the public interest 87 percent of the time in split-decision cases dealing with consumer, environmental and worker rights.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I’d like to turn to our third guest. Robert Weissman is president of Public Citizen. Last week, Public Citizen issued, quote, “An Analysis of Judge Kavanaugh’s Opinions in Split-Decision Cases” and found that during his 12 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Judge Brett Kavanaugh decided or wrote an opinion against the public interest 87 percent of the time in split-decision cases dealing with consumer, environmental and worker rights.

Bob Weissman, welcome to Democracy Now! I wanted to ask you about some of those decisions. In labor cases, for instance, it’s a remarkable record. And these are obviously—you chose to concentrate on the actual public record, as the Republicans have been urging everyone to do, and you specifically dealt with those cases that the judge was a deciding vote in a three-judge panel decision.

ROBERT WEISSMAN: Right. So, Judge Kavanaugh sits on the appeals court. The appeals court hears cases with three judges or sometimes the full panel en banc. A lot of cases that come up really aren’t very close, or they’re decided 3 to 0, and they don’t tell you typically that much about what a judge thinks. But when the judges split, we know that there’s some difference of opinion. There’s actually a chance for the judges to go one way or the other. And in those—studying those cases, you can really figure out, over time, what a judge’s philosophy is.

And we looked at all of Judge Kavanaugh’s split-decision opinions. It’s more than a hundred of them. And the results were astounding, as you say. In the employment and worker rights area, he decided 15 times for employers and only two times for employees, both times in relatively obscure issues—so almost always for the employer. Same thing for the environment: 11 times for corporations or against entities suing to block environmental protection, only twice for the side of clean air and clean water. And the same thing for consumer: 18 to 4, almost always for business, very rarely for consumers or the public interest.

AMY GOODMAN: What about on issues of the environment, Rob?

ROBERT WEISSMAN: You know, he is hostile to the Environmental Protection Agency. So, there were a couple cases where he appears to side for the environment, but actually, when you look at them more carefully, not so much. But, overwhelmingly, 11 out of these 13 cases, he decided on behalf of polluters.

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https://www.democracynow.org/2018/9/5/report_finds_judge_kavanaugh_ruled_against