Brett Kavanaugh: What needs to happen before Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee can be appointed?

Donald Trump has announced his nomination for new US Supreme Court justice: Brett Kavanaugh.

If approved, Mr Kavanaugh, 53, will succeed the liberal-minded Justice Anthony Kennedy, 81, who announced his retirement in June.

Considered a stolid conservative, the president’s choice has been criticised by Democrats who fear his appointment would pull the court’s political bias to the right, imperilling abortion rights and gay marriage, bolstering support for capital punishment and weakening the influence of regulatory authorities.

Mr Kavanaugh, a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is known for drafting the Starr Report in 1998 recommending the impeachment of president Bill Clinton and working on the Florida recount of 2000 as part of George W Bush’s campaign team.

He was chosen from a shortlist of candidates including federal judges Amy Coney Barrett, Raymond Kethledge and Thomas Hardiman.

Among the most outspoken critics of his selection was Democratic senator Bob Casey, who tweeted it was “outrageous that President Trump will nominate from a list of just 25 dictated to him by the Heritage Foundation”, alluding to a conservative think-tank, branding the situation a “corrupt bargain” between the “far right, big corporations and Washington special interests”.

But what happens next and how is a Supreme Court justice appointed?

Article II, section 2 of the US constitution places an obligation on the president to submit a preferred candidate: “[The president] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court”.

The nominee does not need any special qualifications to be considered, not even a law degree or US citizenship.

The position is a job for life, intended as such to shield the justices from the need to seek re-election and therefore from the influence of lobbyists and special interest groups bearing the promise of campaign donations.

Once the president has announced the name – as Mr Trump did last night, heavily trailing the announcement on Twitter to build suspense – it falls to the Senate Judiciary Committee to consider their suitability.

The committee vets the potential justice, reviewing their professional and personal background and interviewing them on their constitutional views during a hearing that can take a matter of hours or even days.

A vote is then held to decide whether the candidate will be rejected or approved.

(AP)
(AP)

A famous rejection occurred in 2005 when George W Bush’s choice, Texas lawyer Harriet Miers – then serving in Washington as his White House special counsel – was spurned on the grounds that her written responses to questioning were “incomplete to insulting”, in the judgement of Democrat Patrick Leahy.

She was privately told she had “flunked” and publicly dismissed as little more than a “crony” of the Bush family and satirised savagely as such by political cartoonists.

If this eventuality occurs, the president is then invited to choose a new nominee and the whole process starts over.

Should Judge Kavanaugh be approved, the decision will then fall to the Senate, which will hold its own hearing and vote on his suitability. The House’s decision is final.

The Republicans currently have a slim 51-49 majority in the Senate, reduced from the 54-45 it held when Mr Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, was elected to replace the late Antonin Scalia in April 2017.

This places particular emphasis on two Republicans – Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – both of whom support a woman’s right to an abortion and will be seeking assurances that Mr Kavanaugh has no ambition to overturn the Roe v Wade decision establishing abortion rights, in spite of Mr Trump’s 2016 pledge that he would be “putting pro-life justices on the court.”

The possible absence of Arizona senator John McCain from the vote, currently recovering from brain cancer, places further pressure on the Republican cause in the face of minority leader Chuck Schumer’s Democrats presenting a united front opposing Judge Kavanaugh.

The latter will be guided through the process by Arizona Republican Jon Kyl, an experienced ex-senator, who will serve as his “sherpa” through this treacherous terrain.

The trek can be a long one. In 1916, it took the Senate 125 days to appoint Kentucky lawyer Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court.