- Ashley N. Baker
Media Roundup
This week, CFJ was featured in an interview on the front page of The New York Times. Additional interviews and commentary can be found in POLITICO, The Guardian, Axios, The Daily Signal, Amsterdam News, The Milkwaulkee Courier, and elsewhere. Links and quotes can be found below:
Interviews & Commentary
The New York Times: “They’ve been pushing back for 30 years, and, obviously, the announcement tonight is a big step in the right direction,” said Curt Levey, the president of the Committee for Justice, a conservative activist group, who has been working toward this goal full time since 2005. “It’ll be the first time we can really say we have a conservative court, really the first time since the 1930s.”
...Inspired by Mr. Meese, groups like the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, the Judicial Crisis Network, the Judicial Action Group and Mr. Levey’s Committee for Justice have for years sought to develop a new generation of younger legal conservatives who would go into government and fill out lower levels of the judiciary. “You have to have that army before you can credential them, and that army just didn’t exist before Reagan,” Mr. Levey said.
...Still, some longtime legal scholars said it would be a mistake to assume that Judge Kavanaugh’s appointment would change the court fundamentally for the foreseeable future. “The possibility of drift is always there,” Mr. Levey said. And if a Democrat were to win the White House in 2020, a conservative vacancy could still swing the court back...”
POLITICO: “It’s going to be a tougher fight because you’re replacing Kennedy and not Scalia and because the margins in the Senate are tighter,” said Curt Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, a conservative legal group.
...Levey said his group does not plan to buy ads that focus exclusively on swing-vote senators. Instead, the group will focus on targeted advertisements. He said Committee for Justice likely is purchasing ads in the week leading up to the nomination as well as the week before the vote...
The Guardian: But others suggest that predictions of doom for Roe v Wade are exaggerated. Curt Levey, president of the rightwing advocacy group the Committee for Justice, said: “I don’t see [chief justice] John Roberts overturning it. I think conservative justices are also conservative in the small ‘c’ sense. They just don’t see the courts’ role as being radical change."
...“Will they slowly eat away at Roe so at future date it might be overturned? Possibly. But right now I just don’t see it.”
...Levey said: “The Democrats have very little chance of stopping the nominee where they are. They have to put on a show for their base but I suspect, when it’s over, we’ll be surprised that it was not a fight to the death, just a fight to clawing each other’s eyes out...”
Axios: In the NYT, Peter Baker quotes Curt Levey, president of the conservative Committee for Justice. In the likelihood that Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed as the next new Supreme Court justice, it will mean "a conservative court, really [for] the first time since the 1930s,” Levey tells him. It's worth noting that that one of the main legacies of that court was the dismantlement of key components of the New Deal, which established Social Security and other key social programs that are part of the U.S. firmament...
The Daily Signal: Now, 15 years later, Kavanaugh faces Senate Democrats as President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. The challenge will be only more difficult, said Curt Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, a conservative legal group that monitors judicial nominations.
“I was surprised at the time that Kavanaugh did get confirmed to the D.C. Circuit, given the number of Bush nominees that Senate Democrats were obstructing,” Levey told The Daily Signal.
...Kavanaugh wasn’t among the 10, but the governing principle eventually allowed his nomination to come to a vote, Levey said.
“Democrats were critical of Kavanaugh, but they were trying to block a number of judges as a larger pattern of obstruction,” Levey said. “Don’t draw too many conclusions from circuit court votes. The stakes are higher and it is more divisive today. We also no longer have the judicial filibuster...”
Amsterdam News: Conservatives “have been pushing back [against liberalism] for 30 years, and obviously, the announcement tonight is a big step in the right direction,” said Curt Levey, the president of the Committee for Justice....
Milwaukee Courier: Conservatives “have been pushing back [against liberalism] for 30 years, and obviously, the announcement tonight is a big step in the right direction,” said Curt Levey, the president of the Committee for Justice, a conservative activist group. A graduate of Yale Law School, Judge Kavanaugh is the only child of two judges. He is currently on the Washington D.C. Circuit Court. Judge Kavanaugh was nominated to fill the seat of retiring Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, 81. Brett Kavanaugh was a law clerk under Justice Kennedy, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan...
Media & Blog Mentions
In reaction to President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, politicians and interest groups are releasing statements...
In support of the nominee: Alliance Defending Freedom (Michael Farris, president, CEO and general counsel); Americans United for Life (Catherine Glenn Foster, president and CEO); Committee for Justice (Curt Levey, president); First Liberty Institute (Kelly Shackelford, president, CEO and general counsel); Gun Owners of America (Erich Pratt, executive director); Heritage Action for America (Tim Chapman, executive director); Institute for Free Speech (Bradley Smith, chairman and founder); March for Life (Jeanne Mancini, president); National Rifle Association of America, Institute for Legislative Action; Pacific Legal Foundation; Tea Party Patriots Action (Jenny Beth Martin, honorary chairman); The Catholic Association...