TRUMP’S JUSTICE
PRESIDENT TRUMP HAD NARROWED HIS list of contenders for the nation’s highest court to four by the time Air Force One touched down outside Washington on July 8. But Trump wanted another sit-down with one candidate in particular. That evening at the White House, Trump spent more than an hour in his private residence talking with Brett Kavanaugh about the judge’s family, his life growing up in the capital with two lawyers as parents, and his work, according to a person familiar with the discussion. It was the longest amount of time Trump had spent with any of the candidates. After their discussion, Trump said Kavanaugh was a judge “out of central casting,” one of the President’s favorite compliments.
The meeting led directly to the East Room of the White House the following night where Trump announced Kavanaugh’s nomination beneath gleaming chandeliers. There, Kavanaugh needed only 14 words to describe his approach to the bench: “A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law.” That simple sentence was more than just a judicial philosophy. It reflected the culmination of two distinct efforts at judicial mentoring, which came together in Kavanaugh’s nomination. One was a four-decade effort by an entire generation of conservatives to bend the court away from judicial activism. The other was a patient education and corralling of Trump by a handful of Republican legal elites.
The intrigue surrounding the selection was, of course, classic Trump, from an interview process that resembled a matchmaking show to the pageantry of the
