Brett Kavanaugh

Kavanaugh authored his first opinion on January 8, 2019, in the case of Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, Inc., in which a unanimous Court reversed the appeals court opinion that had allowed a court to decide whether an issue in a contract between a dental equipment manufacturer and distributor should be decided by arbitration.

In February 2019, Kavanaugh joined three of his conservative colleagues to vote to reject a request for a stay of a Louisiana law to restrict abortion. He issued his own dissenting opinion. CNBC reported that "Kavanaugh agreed [with three conservative justices], but wrote separately that he would be open to reconsidering the legality of the law if the dire warnings from abortion rights groups materialized."

Also in February, Justice Kavanaugh was a part of the majority in decisions relating to the death penalty. On February 7, 2019, Kavanaugh was a part of the majority in a 5–4 decision rejecting a Muslim prisoner's request to delay the execution in order to have an imam present with him during the execution. On February 19, 2019, Kavanaugh joined Roberts and the court's four liberal justices in a 6–3 decision blocking the execution of a man with an "intellectual disability" in Texas.

President Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court on July 9, 2018, to fill the position vacated by retiring Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy. When Kavanaugh's name was on the short list of Supreme Court nominees and before his nomination, Palo Alto University Professor of Psychology Christine Blasey Ford contacted a Washington Post tip line with accusations that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in the early 1980s while the two were in high school. Two other women also accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct. Kavanaugh denied all three accusations. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a supplemental hearing over Ford's allegations, after which it voted to advance the confirmation to a full Senate vote. After delaying the vote for an additional FBI investigation, the Senate confirmed Kavanaugh's nomination by a vote of 50–48 on October 6, 2018.

On September 20, 2018, The Guardian reported that two Yale professors had advised female law students at Yale that their physical appearance and femininity could play a role in securing a clerkship with Kavanaugh. Jed Rubenfeld stated that Kavanaugh "hires women with a certain look", although the source stated, Rubenfeld did not say what that look was. Chua was reported by unnamed sources as having stated that female applicants should exude "model-like" femininity and "dress outgoing" in their job interview with Kavanaugh. Responding to the report, Chua denied that Kavanaugh's hiring decisions were affected by female applicants' attractiveness, stating, "Judge Kavanaugh's first and only litmus test in hiring has been excellence." Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken announced an investigation of the matter, but Yale did not find any cause for sanction, with Professor Chua already returning to regular teaching in 2019.

On July 2, 2018, Kavanaugh was one of four U.S. Court of Appeals judges to receive a personal 45-minute interview by President Donald Trump as a potential replacement for Justice Anthony Kennedy. On July 9, Trump nominated Kavanaugh for a seat on the Supreme Court. In his first public speech after the nomination, Kavanaugh said, "No president has ever consulted more widely or talked with more people from more backgrounds to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination."

The Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled three or four days of public hearings on Kavanaugh's nomination, commencing on September 4, 2018. The hearings were at the onset delayed with objections from the Democratic members, concerning the absence of records during the nominee's time in the George W. Bush administration, prior to his service as a federal circuit court judge. The Democrats also complained that 42,000 pages of documents had been received at the 11th hour, the night before the first day of hearings. Repeated statements from the Republicans included the assertion that the volume of documents available on this nominee equaled that of the previous five nominees for the court; the Democrats responded with their repeated contention that only 15% of demanded documents about the nominee had been obtained. Numerous motions by the Democrats to adjourn or suspend the hearings were ruled to be out of order by Chairman Chuck Grassley, who argued that Judge Kavanaugh had written over 300 legal opinions available for review. The first day's session closed after statements from each senator and the nominee, with question and answer periods to begin the following day.

During the first round of questions from senators on September 5, 2018, Kavanaugh held to his earlier stated position that he would not express an opinion on matters that might come before the court. He thus refused to promise to recuse himself from any case, including any that might involve President Trump. He also declined to comment on coverage of pre-existing healthcare conditions, semiautomatic rifle possession, the precedent of Roe v. Wade, or the President's power to issue a self-pardon. The nominee was given the opportunity and expounded at length upon various Constitutional amendments, stare decisis (the role of legal precedent in shaping subsequent judicial rulings), and the President's power to dismiss federal employees. As in the prior session, there were frequent outbursts of protest in the audience, requiring security intervention and removal, as well as repeated procedural objections from Democrats.

Eighty-three ethics complaints were brought against Kavanaugh in regard to his conduct during his U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Chief Justice John Roberts appointed a special federal panel of judges to investigate the complaints. In December 2018, the judicial panel dismissed all 83 ethics complaints, acknowledging them as "serious" but nevertheless deciding that lower court judges have no authority to investigate Supreme Court justices.

Kavanaugh was sworn in as the 114th Justice of the Supreme Court on the evening of October 6, 2018. The Constitutional Oath was administered by Chief Justice Roberts and the Judicial Oath was administered by retired Associate Justice Kennedy, whom Kavanaugh succeeded on the Court. This private ceremony was followed by a public ceremony at the White House on October 8. Upon joining the court, Kavanaugh became the first Supreme Court justice to hire an all-female team of law clerks.

Kavanaugh began his tenure as Supreme Court Justice on October 9, 2018, hearing arguments for Stokeling v. United States and United States v. Stitt.

In December 2018, as a swing vote, Kavanaugh joined Chief Justice Roberts and the court's four more liberal justices to decline hearing cases brought by the states of Louisiana and Kansas, which sought to block women from choosing to receive Medicaid-funded medical care from Planned Parenthood clinics. Two lower appeals courts had ruled that the federal law creating Medicaid protects patients' rights to choose any provider which is "qualified to perform" the needed services.

In early July 2018, Kavanaugh's name was on a shortlist of nominees for the Supreme Court. Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University, contacted a The Washington Post tipline and her congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D-California) with accusations that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when she was in high school. On July 30, 2018, Ford wrote to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) to inform her of her sexual assault accusation against Kavanaugh, requesting that her accusation be kept confidential. Following a September 12 report in The Intercept, Feinstein confirmed that a complaint had been made against Kavanaugh by a woman who had requested not to be identified. Feinstein stated that the woman and Kavanaugh were both in high school when the woman accused Kavanaugh of trying to force himself on her while she was being physically restrained. On the same day, Feinstein stated that she had forwarded the woman's accusation to federal authorities.

Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer of The New Yorker published a piece with an additional sexual assault allegation against Kavanaugh on September 23, 2018. Deborah Ramirez, who attended Yale University with Kavanaugh, alleged Kavanaugh exposed himself to her and thrust his penis against her face after they had both been drinking at a college party during the 1983–1984 academic year. Kavanaugh said, "This alleged event from 35 years ago did not happen." The New York Times interviewed several dozen of her classmates in an attempt to corroborate her story, and could find no firsthand witnesses to the alleged assault, but several classmates recalled that they had heard about it in the subsequent days and believed Ramirez. According to the New York Times, "Ramirez herself told the press and friends that, initially, she was not absolutely certain it was Kavanaugh who assaulted her, but after corresponding with friends who had secondhand knowledge of the incident, and taking time to refresh her recollection, stated that she was certain Kavanaugh was her assailant."

Michael Avenatti, the lawyer representing Stormy Daniels in her suit against Donald Trump, stated in a tweet on September 23, 2018 that he represented a woman who had "credible information" regarding Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge. Avenatti asserted that his client would be willing to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. On September 26, Avenatti revealed the woman to be Julie Swetnick, a former government employee, who declared in a sworn statement that she went to high school parties involving Kavanaugh and Judge and that it was common at such parties for boys to prey on girls, sometimes by spiking or drugging the drinks so that the girls could not resist. In an interview with NBC News, Swetnick clarified that she didn't actually witness Kavanaugh or Judge spike any drinks.Kavanaugh described her allegations as "ridiculous" and the allegation as a whole, made by Avenatti, a "farce". The Wall Street Journal reported that it had contacted "dozens" of her former classmates and colleagues, but failed to reach anyone with knowledge of her allegations and that none of her friends have come forward publicly to support her claims. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley referred both Swetnick and Avenatti to the Justice Department for criminal investigation regarding claims that the two engaged in "conspiracy, false statements and obstruction of Congress".

In the October 2017 Garza v. Hargan decision, Kavanaugh joined an unsigned, divided-panel of the D.C. Circuit in holding that the Office of Refugee Resettlement does not violate an unaccompanied alien minor's constitutional right to an abortion by requiring that she first be appointed a sponsor before travelling to obtain the abortion, provided "the process of securing a sponsor to whom the minor is released occurs expeditiously." Days later, the en banc D.C. Circuit reversed that judgment, with Kavanaugh dissenting. In his dissent, Kavanaugh criticized the majority for creating "a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand". The girl then obtained an abortion. In 2018, in a follow-up petition from the Solicitor General of the United States, the en banc D.C. Circuit's judgment was vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court and the girl's claim was ultimately dismissed as moot. Thus it does not serve as precedent.

The Committee's third day of hearings began with a furor over the release of emails of Kavanaugh that related to concern about potential racial profiling in security screenings. The day continued with Kavanaugh's attempts to articulate his jurisprudence, including refusing direct questions to opine on matters that he characterized as hypothetical. Senator Chris Coons had tendered Kavanaugh written questions about any knowledge of inappropriate behavior on the part of judge Alex Kozinski, for whom Kavanaugh had clerked, including his circulations of sexually explicit emails via his "Easy Rider Gag List". According to The Intercept, though Coons had asked him to review his emails from the judge, Kavanaugh instead replied: "I do not remember". Some time during his testimony, Kavanaugh stated that the 2017 exposure of his mentor, judge Alex Kozinski, as an alleged prolific sexual harasser, was a surprising "gut punch".The Guardian reported that their sources disputed Kavanaugh's account because Kozinski's alleged behavior was reportedly widely known among those in the judiciary system and its exposure culminated in his abrupt resignation from the bench.

In Meshal v. Higgenbotham (2016), Kavanaugh concurred when the divided panel threw out a claim by an American that he had been disappeared by the FBI in a Kenyan black site.

According to the Judicial Common Space scores, a score based on the ideology scores of the home state senators and the president who nominated the judge to the federal bench, Clarence Thomas is the only justice more conservative than Kavanaugh. According to this metric, Kavanaugh's confirmation would mean the composition of the court would shift to the right. Had Barack Obama's nominee Merrick Garland been confirmed in 2016, Stephen Breyer would have become the median swing vote when Justice Kennedy retired. However, since Antonin Scalia was replaced by another conservative (Gorsuch), it was expected that Chief Justice John Roberts would become the median swing vote on the Supreme Court upon Kavanaugh's confirmation.

In 2015, Kavanaugh found that those directly regulated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) could challenge the constitutionality of its design. In October 2016, Kavanaugh wrote for a divided panel finding that the CFPB's design was unconstitutional, and made the CFPB Director removable by the President of the United States. In January 2018, the en banc D.C. Circuit reversed that judgment by a vote of 7–3, over the dissent of Kavanaugh.

In Klayman v. Obama (2015), Kavanaugh concurred when the circuit court denied an en banc rehearing of its decision to vacate a district court order blocking the National Security Agency's warrantless bulk collection of telephony metadata. In his concurrence, Kavanaugh wrote that the metadata collection was not a search, and, even if it were, no reasonable suspicion would be required because of the government's special need to prevent terrorist attacks.

In 2014, Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment when the en banc D.C. Circuit found that the Free Speech Clause did not forbid the government from requiring meatpackers to include a country of origin label on their products. In United States Telecom Ass'n v. FCC (2016), Kavanaugh dissented when the en banc circuit refused to rehear a rejected challenge to the net neutrality rule, writing, "Congress did not clearly authorize the FCC to issue the net neutrality rule".

In 2013, Kavanaugh issued an extraordinary writ of mandamus requiring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to process the license application of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, over the dissent of Judge Merrick Garland. In April 2014, Kavanaugh dissented when the court found that Labor Secretary Tom Perez could issue workplace safety citations against SeaWorld regarding the multiple killings of its workers by Tilikum the orca.

After Kavanaugh wrote for a divided panel striking down a Clean Air Act regulation, the Supreme Court reversed by a vote of 6–2 in EPA v. EME Homer City Generation, L.P. (2014). Kavanaugh dissented from the denial of rehearing en banc of a unanimous panel opinion upholding the agency's regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and a fractured Supreme Court reversed by a vote of 5–4 in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency (2014). After Judge Kavanaugh dissented from a per curiam decision allowing the agency to disregard cost–benefit analysis, the Supreme Court reversed by a vote of 5–4 in Michigan v. EPA (2015).

On October 5, the Senate voted 51–49 to invoke cloture, advancing the nomination to a final floor vote expected on October 6. This was enabled through the application of the so-called "nuclear option", or a simple majority vote, rather than the historical three-fifths supermajority in place before April 2017. The vote was along party lines, with the exception of Democrat Joe Manchin voting yes and Republican Lisa Murkowski voting no.

On October 6, the Senate confirmed Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court with a 50–48 vote. One senator, Republican Steve Daines, who supported the nomination, was absent during the vote due to his attendance at the wedding of his daughter that day, and Murkowski voted "present" despite her opposition, so that their two votes would be canceled out and the balance of the vote would be retained – a rarely used traditional courtesy known as a "pair between senators". All Republicans except Daines and Murkowski voted to approve the nomination, and all Democrats voted in opposition, except Joe Manchin who voted to approve the nomination. Kavanaugh's confirmation vote was historically close. In terms of actual votes, the only Supreme Court confirmation vote that was closer was the vote on Stanley Matthews, nominated by President James A. Garfield in 1881. Matthews was confirmed by the margin of a single vote, 24-23; no other justice has been confirmed by a single vote. However, in percentage terms, Kavanaugh's vote was even closer than Matthews'. Matthews was supported by 51.06% of the senators voting, but Kavanaugh only got 51.02% of the vote.

In November 2011, Kavanaugh dissented when the D.C. Circuit upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), arguing that the court lacked jurisdiction in the case. In his dissent concerning jurisdiction, he compared the individual mandate to a tax. After a unanimous panel found that the ACA did not violate the Constitution's Origination Clause in Sissel v. United States Department of Health & Human Services (2014), Kavanaugh wrote a lengthy dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc. In May 2015, Kavanaugh dissented from a decision that denied an en banc rehearing of the Priests for Life v. HHS ruling in which the panel upheld the ACA's contraceptive mandate accommodations against Priests for Life' s Religious Freedom Restoration Act claims. In Zubik v. Burwell (2016), the Supreme Court vacated the circuit's judgment in a per curiam decision.

In October 2011, Kavanaugh dissented when the circuit court found that a ban on the sale of semi-automatic rifles was permissible under the Second Amendment. This case followed the landmark Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008).

In November 2010, Kavanaugh dissented from the denial of rehearing en banc after the circuit found that attaching a Global Positioning System tracking device to a vehicle violated the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The circuit's judgment was then affirmed by the Supreme Court in United States v. Jones (2012). In February 2016, Kavanaugh dissented when the en banc circuit refused to rehear police officers' rejected claims of qualified immunity for arresting partygoers in a vacant house. In District of Columbia v. Wesby (2018), the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the circuit's judgment.

In August 2010, Kavanaugh wrote a lengthy concurrence when the en banc circuit refused to rehear Ghaleb Nassar Al Bihani's rejected claims that the international law of war limits the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists. In 2014, Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment when the en banc circuit found that Ali al-Bahlul could be retroactively convicted of war crimes, provided existing statute already made it a crime "because it does not alter the definition of the crime, the defenses or the punishment". In October 2016, Kavanaugh wrote the plurality opinion when the en banc circuit found al-Bahlul could be convicted by a military commission even if his offenses are not internationally recognized as war crimes under the law of war.

Kavanaugh ran the Boston Marathon in 2010 and 2015. His bibs represented nonqualifying numbers, assigned for a charity or a "guest" rather than an age-based time qualifier. He also has completed many shorter races, from 5 km to 10 miles.

In April 2009, Kavanaugh wrote a lengthy concurrence when the court found that detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp had no right to advanced notice before being transferred to another country. In Kiyemba v. Obama (2010), the Supreme Court vacated that judgment while refusing to review the matter. In June 2010, Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence in judgment when the en banc D.C. Circuit found that the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory owners could not bring a defamation suit regarding the government's allegations that they were terrorists. In October 2012, he wrote for a unanimous court when it found that the Constitution's Ex Post Facto Clause made it unlawful for the government to prosecute Salim Hamdan under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 on charges of providing material support for terrorism.

A statistical analysis by The Washington Post estimated that Kavanaugh was more conservative than Neil Gorsuch and less conservative than Samuel Alito. Jonathan Turley of George Washington University has stated that among the judges considered by Trump, "Kavanaugh has the most robust view of presidential powers and immunities". Brian Bennett writing for Time magazine cites Kavanaugh's 2009 Minnesota Law Review article as defending the privilege of the President to immunity from prosecution during tenure in office. In a 2017 speech at the American Enterprise Institute about former Chief Justice, William Rehnquist, he praised his opinions in Roe v. Wade and Furman v. Georgia, where Rehnquist dissented in rulings that overturned the ban against abortion and the statutes which supported the death penalty. An evaluation of Kavanaugh's appellate court decisions was performed by two law professors for the Washington Post, They rated his decisions in four areas: rights of criminal defendants; support for rules regarding stricter enforcement of environmental protection; upholding the rights of labor unions; and siding with those bringing suits alleging discrimination. They found he had the most conservative voting record on the D.C. Court in three of those policy areas, and the second-most in the fourth, between 2003 and 2018.

In 2009, Kavanaugh wrote an article for the Minnesota Law Review in which he argued that Congress should exempt U.S. presidents from civil lawsuits while in office because, among other things, such lawsuits could be "time-consuming and distracting" for the president and would thus "ill serve the public interest, especially in times of financial or national security crisis. Kavanaugh argued that if a president "does something dastardly," that president may be impeached by the House of Representatives, convicted by the Senate, and then criminally prosecuted after leaving office. He asserted that the U.S. would have been better off if President Clinton could have "focused on Osama bin Laden without being distracted by the Paula Jones sexual harassment case and its criminal investigation offshoots". This article garnered attention in 2018 when Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Donald Trump, whose 2016 presidential campaign was at the time the subject of a federal probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

In August 2008, Kavanaugh dissented when the D.C. Circuit found that the Constitution's Appointments Clause did not prevent the Sarbanes–Oxley Act from creating a board whose members were not directly removable by the President. In Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010), the Supreme Court reversed the circuit court's judgment by a vote of 5–4.

Kavanaugh taught full-term courses on Separation of Powers at Harvard Law School from 2008 to 2015, on the Supreme Court at Harvard Law School between 2014 and 2018, on National Security and Foreign Relations Law at Yale Law School in 2011, and on Constitutional Interpretation at Georgetown University Law Center in 2007. Kavanaugh has also been named the Samuel Williston Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School since 2009. Kavanaugh was hired as a visiting professor by Elena Kagan, who was then the dean of Harvard Law School in 2008. According to The Boston Globe, he was generous with his time and accessible, and quickly became a student favorite. He would often dine in Cambridge with students and offer references and career advice. Kavanaugh received high evaluations from his students, including J. D. Vance. Following allegations of sexual misconduct during his Supreme Court confirmation process, Harvard Law School graduates petitioned the university to rescind Kavanaugh's position as a lecturer. Shortly after, Kavanaugh voluntarily withdrew from teaching at Harvard for the 2019 winter semester. In the summer of 2019, Kavanaugh joined the faculty of George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School as a visiting professor, co-teaching a summer course in Runnymede, England, on the origins and creation of the United States Constitution.

In July 2007, Senators Patrick Leahy and Dick Durbin accused Kavanaugh of lying to the Judiciary Committee when he denied being involved in formulating the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies. In 2002, Kavanaugh had told other White House lawyers that he believed Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy would not approve of denying legal counsel to prisoners detained as enemy combatants. The issue re-emerged in July 2018 after Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court.

In Doe v. Exxon Mobil Corp. (2007), Kavanaugh dissented when the circuit court allowed a lawsuit making accusations of ExxonMobil human rights violations in Indonesia to proceed, arguing in his dissent that the claims were not justiciable. Kavanaugh dissented again when the circuit court later found that the corporation could be sued under the Alien Tort Statute of 1789.

The Senate Judiciary Committee recommended he be confirmed on a 10–8 party-line vote on May 11, 2006, and he was confirmed by the Senate on May 26 by a vote of 57–36. Kavanaugh was sworn in on June 1. He was the fourth judge nominated to the D.C. Circuit by Bush and confirmed. Kavanaugh began hearing cases on September 11 and had his formal investiture on September 27.

At his May 2006 confirmation hearing to be circuit judge for the District of Columbia Circuit, he stated that he was a registered Republican. In 2018, Kavanaugh's reported salary was $220,600 as a federal judge and $27,000 as a lecturer at Harvard Law School.

Kavanaugh and Ashley Estes, the personal secretary to President George W. Bush, were married in 2004 and have two daughters. They live in Chevy Chase Section Five, Maryland.

President George W. Bush nominated Kavanaugh to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on July 25, 2003, but his nomination stalled in the Senate for nearly three years. Democratic senators accused him of being too partisan, with Senator Dick Durbin calling him the "Forrest Gump of Republican politics". In 2003, the American Bar Association had rated Kavanaugh as "well qualified" (its highest category), but, after doing dozens more interviews in 2006, downgraded him to "qualified".

The Committee released a 2003 email in which Kavanaugh said, "I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to [Roe v. Wade] as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so." Kavanaugh stressed that he was commenting on the views of legal scholars at the time, not his own views, and noted that the case had been reaffirmed on a number of occasions since the time of the statement. Sen. Susan Collins, a key but undeclared vote in the confirmation, indicated the statement did not contradict Kavanaugh's personal assurance to her that Roe is settled law. Kavanaugh noted that Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which reaffirmed Roe v. Wade, was "precedent on precedent". According to Kavanaugh, Casey is a key decision about when the Court's precedent may be overturned.

Kavanaugh studied history at Yale University, where he joined Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He then attended the Yale Law School, after which he began his career as a law clerk and then a postgraduate fellow working under Judge Ken Starr. After Starr left the D.C. Circuit to become head of the Office of Independent Counsel, Kavanaugh assisted him with various investigations concerning President Bill Clinton, including the drafting of the Starr Report recommending Clinton's impeachment. After the 2000 U.S. presidential election, in which he worked for the George W. Bush campaign in the Florida recount, he joined the administration as White House Staff Secretary and was a central figure in its efforts to identify and confirm judicial nominees. Kavanaugh was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by President Bush in 2003. His confirmation hearings were contentious; they stalled for three years over charges of partisanship. He was ultimately confirmed to the D.C. Circuit in May 2006 after a series of negotiations between Democratic and Republican U.S. Senators. An evaluation of Kavanaugh's appellate court decisions in four separate public policy areas was performed by two law professors for the Washington Post. It found he had the most conservative overall voting record on the D.C. Court between 2003 and 2018.

In December 2000, Kavanaugh joined the legal team of George W. Bush, which was trying to stop the ballot recount in Florida. After Bush became president in January 2001, Kavanaugh was hired as an associate by the White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales. There, Kavanaugh worked on the Enron scandal, the successful nomination of Chief Justice John Roberts, and the unsuccessful nomination of Miguel Estrada. Starting in July 2003, he served as Assistant to the President and White House Staff Secretary, succeeding Harriet Miers. In that position he was responsible for coordinating all documents going to and from the president.

While Kavanaugh was at Kirkland & Ellis, he authored two amicus briefs to the Supreme Court that supported religious activities and expressions in public places. The first, in 2000, in Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, argued that a student speaker at football games voted for by a majority of students should be treated as private speech in a limited public forum; the second, in Good News Club v. Milford Central School, argued that a Christian Bible instruction program should have the same after-school access to school facilities as other non-curriculum-related student groups.

Kavanaugh was a principal author of the Starr Report to Congress, released in September 1998, on the Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky sex scandal; the report argued on broad grounds for Clinton's impeachment. Kavanaugh had urged Starr to ask Clinton sexually graphic questions, and described Clinton as being involved in "a conspiracy to obstruct justice", having "disgraced his office" and "lied to the American people". The report provided extensive and explicit descriptions of each of the President's sexual encounters with Lewinsky, a level of detail which the authors described as "essential" to the case against Clinton.

After his Supreme Court clerkship, Kavanaugh again worked for Ken Starr until 1997 as an Associate Counsel in the Office of the Independent Counsel with colleagues Rod Rosenstein and Alex Azar. In that capacity, he reopened an investigation into the 1993 gunshot death of Vincent Foster. After three years, the investigation concluded that Foster had committed suicide. In a September, 2018, New York Times op-ed, Princeton University history professor Sean Wilentz criticized Kavanaugh for having invested federal money and other resources into investigating partisan conspiracy theories surrounding the cause of Foster's death.

After working in private practice in 1997–1998, he rejoined Starr as an Associate Counselor in 1998. In Swidler & Berlin v. United States (1998), Kavanaugh argued his first and only case before the Supreme Court. Arguing for Starr's office, Kavanaugh asked the court to disregard attorney-client privilege in relation to the investigation of Foster's death. The court rejected Kavanaugh's arguments by a vote of 6–3.

From 1997 to 1998, Kavanaugh was a partner at the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. In 1999, Kavanaugh rejoined the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis as a partner. While there in 2000, he was pro bono counsel of record for relatives of Elián González, a six-year-old rescued Cuban boy. After the boy's mother's death at sea, relatives in the U.S. wanted to keep him from returning to the care of his sole surviving parent, his father in Cuba. Kavanaugh was among a series of lawyers who unsuccessfully sought to stop efforts to repatriate Gonzalez to Cuba. The district court, Circuit Court and Supreme Court all followed precedent, refusing to block the boy's return to his home.

In 1992, Kavanaugh earned a one-year fellowship with the Solicitor General of the United States, Ken Starr. Also in 1992, he worked as a summer associate for Munger, Tolles & Olson. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy from 1993–1994, working alongside fellow high school alumnus Neil Gorsuch and with future-Judge Gary Feinerman.

Kavanaugh then attended Yale Law School, where he lived in a group house with future judge James E. Boasberg and played basketball with professor George L. Priest (sponsor of the school's Federalist Society). He was a member of the Yale Law Journal and served as a notes editor during his third year. Kavanaugh graduated from Yale Law with a Juris Doctor degree in 1990.

Kavanaugh has been a member of the Federalist Society since 1988. In the administration of George W. Bush, he held a key position that involved judicial appointments. Bush judicial nominees who were Federalist Society members included John Roberts and Samuel Alito, both appointed to the Supreme Court, and about half of the judges appointed to the courts of appeals.

After graduating from Georgetown Prep in 1983, Kavanaugh went to Yale University, as had his paternal grandfather. Several of Kavanaugh's Yale classmates remembered him as a "serious but not showy student" who loved sports, especially basketball. He unsuccessfully tried out for the Yale Bulldogs men's basketball team and later played for two years on the junior varsity team. He wrote articles about basketball and other sports for the Yale Daily News, and was a member of the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon. He graduated from Yale in 1987 with a Bachelor of Arts cum laude in history. In October 2018, it was reported that Kavanaugh and Chris Dudley were in a bar fight in September 1985 after Kavanaugh threw ice at a man who looked like Ali Campbell of UB40.

On September 16, Ford publicized her allegations and claimed Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when she was 15 and he was 17. She stated that in the early 1980s, Kavanaugh and Mark Judge, one of Kavanaugh's friends from Georgetown Prep, corralled her in a bedroom at a house party in Maryland and turned up the music playing in the room. According to Ford, Kavanaugh pinned her to the bed, groped her, ground against her, tried to pull off her clothes, and covered her mouth with his hand when she tried to scream. Ford said she was afraid that Kavanaugh might inadvertently kill her during the attack, and believed he was going to rape her. Ford stated that she escaped when Judge jumped on the bed, knocking them all to the floor.

Brett Michael Kavanaugh (/ˈ k æ v ə n ɔː / ; born February 12, 1965) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump to succeed Anthony Kennedy and took the oath of office on October 6, 2018. He previously served as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and as a staff lawyer for various offices of the federal government.

Kavanaugh was born on February 12, 1965, in Washington, D.C., the son of Martha Gamble (née Murphy) and Everett Edward Kavanaugh Jr. He is of Irish Catholic descent on both sides of his family. His paternal great-grandfather immigrated to the United States from Roscommon, Ireland, in the late 19th century, and his maternal Irish lineage goes back to his great-great-grandparents settling in New Jersey. Kavanaugh's father was a lawyer and served as the president of the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association for two decades. His mother was a history teacher at Woodson and McKinley high schools in Washington in the 1960s and 1970s. She later earned a law degree from American University in 1978 and served from 1995 to 2001 as a Maryland Circuit Court judge in Montgomery County, Maryland.