Indian-American legal eagle backs Trump choice for US SC nominee amid outrage and protests from liberals

WASHINGTON: An American constitutional scholar of Indian-origin has proffered a stirring and weighty endorsement of President Donald Trump’s nomination to the US Supreme Court of conservative judge Brett Kavanaugh, whose confirmation process is expected to roil the country’s politics in the coming weeks before his inevitable elevation tilts America decisively to the right for many decades.
Hours after President Trump made known his choice to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy with Kavanaugh, Akhil Amar, considered one of America’s foremost legal minds, pitched in, calling him a ''superb nominee'' and warning that any Democratic opposition to him would be a mistake.
Amar’s endorsement is remarkable because by his own admission, he strongly supported Hillary Clinton for president as well as President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Merrick Garland, whose confirmation was stalled by Republicans.
''But today, with the exception of the current justices and Judge Garland, it is hard to name anyone with judicial credentials as strong as those of Judge Kavanaugh,'' Amar wrote in a controversial NYT OpEd, maintaining that Trump had lived up to his promise to pick ''someone with impeccable credentials, great intellect, unbiased judgment, and deep reverence for the laws and Constitution of the United States.''
A distinguished law professor whose younger brother Vikram is also a legal scholar (Dean of the University of Illinois College of Law), Amar disclosed that Kavanaugh was his student at Yale and maintained he ''commands wide and deep respect among scholars, lawyers and jurists.'' He urged Democrats to support Kavanaugh so that he ''could be confirmed with the ninetysomething Senate votes he deserves, rather than the fiftysomething votes he is likely to get.''
Republicans hold a 51-49 edge in the Senate and a few Democratic Senators from the heartland states that Trump won are expected to vote for Kavanaugh. But Amar made an impassioned please to other Democrats, suggesting that their reading of Kavanaugh may be overwrought.
Many Democrats fear that Kavanaugh’s conservative credentials -- in a bench that is currently tied 4-4 between liberal and conservative justices-- will tilt the court right for the foreseeable future, allowing a rewriting of everything from hard won rights on abortion to same-sex marriage.
While conservatives rejoiced at Amar’s endorsement, many Democrats and liberals were dismayed.
''I’m embarrassed by the scratch-your-back-then-you-scratch mine column of Akhil Amar and I say that as a Yale Law alum and one of his former students,'' said Neera Tanden, a Hillary Clinton acolyte and President of the thinktank Center for American Progress.
Meanwhile, street protests have already begun in Washington with liberal groups holding a late-night rally on the steps of the Supreme Court chanting ''Hell no on Kavanaugh'' and one placard reading ''Keep your theocracy off my democracy.'' Several Democratic Senators addressed the crowd.
Among Kavanaugh’s fiercest opponents is California Senator Kamala Harris, who is on the Senate Judiciary Committee and who pledged to oppose his nomination, saying, ''Whether or not the Supreme Court enforces the spirit of the words ‘Equal Justice Under Law,’ is determined by the individuals who sit on that Court. Brett Kavanaugh represents a fundamental threat to that promise of equality.''
Some lawmakers have gone as far as to suggest Kavanaugh’s elevation will be a blow to American women – shutting out their hard-won freedom, particularly in the area of female reproductive rights, and leaving it in the hands of five male conservative justices.
Of the four liberal justices, three are women (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor).
Others have seen an even deeper ulterior motive in the choice of a man who is seen as a Bush loyalist, a fact that should have put off Trump: Kavanaugh sees the US presidency as such a unique and challenging job that he believes the White House occupant should be shielded from indictment, prosecution, or interrogation while in office.