Confirmed: The Supreme Court Is Just Another White Boys’ Club
When President Trump nominated conservative federal appeals court judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court on Monday night, he dealt a potential death blow to Roe v. Wade and threatened to upend the balance of the court for decades to come. And he also confirmed that the Supreme Court—which is supposed to be impartial, noble, and, yes, supreme—is just another white boys’ club. A fraternity. An eating club. That creepy titular secret society from the 2000 Paul Walker classic The Skulls. Take your pick, really,
It’s not just that Trump nominated another white guy to the high court—that was predictable enough. It’s that choosing Kavanaugh appears to be a carefully crafted plan hatched and executed by a series of powerful white guys.
It began with the White House’s “quiet campaign” to persuade Kennedy to step down and create another Supreme Court vacancy. As reported by The New York Times, Trump seemed to appease Kennedy and ensure his legacy was secure by nominating Kennedy’s former clerk, Neil Gorsuch, to late justice Antonin Scalia’s seat. As a bonus, he elevated two more Kennedy clerks— Kavanaugh and Raymond Kethledge—to federal judgeships.
“Allies of the White House were more blunt,” The Times reported, “warning the 81-year-old justice that time was of the essence. There was no telling, they said, what would happen if Democrats gained control of the Senate after the November elections and had the power to block the president’s choice as his successor.” Imagine—just imagine!—the horror: Democrats could, as they have been wont to do, nominate someone who is not a white guy and essential rubber stamp conservative vote to the Supreme Court. It would be almost too terrible to bear.
This twisted little web is so white and so male, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh went to high school together. And, on exit from a 2017 address to Congress, Trump actually breathed the bro-y words, “Say hello to your boy” to Justice Kennedy—a reference to Kennedy’s son, Justin, a Deutsche Bank real estate executive whom Trump had worked with in the past.
Today this all-too-cozy, white guy camaraderie seemed to extend to disturbing new levels, as NBC reported that Trump and Kennedy had actually negotiated his selection of Kavanaugh over the last few months, as a condition of Kennedy’s stepping down.
White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah—perhaps the only man mentioned in this story who is not a white guy—didn’t even bother to deny the report in a Tuesday morning CNN appearance, saying, “Justice Kennedy can speak for himself” and “I’m not going to read out private conversations that Justice Kennedy had with either members of the White House or the president.” Which is not to say that these machinations between Trump and Kennedy did not occur—just that CNN’s Jon Berman and the American public shouldn’t pry into the whispers of white guys making deals.
The Supreme Court has always had a problematic history: it upheld slavery and segregation in decisions that clearly did not age well. But as Think Progress wrote on Tuesday of the Kennedy-Trump plan, “It’s not supposed to work like this.” Past presidents have surely made their desires for a SCOTUS vacancy known, but Trump and Kennedy’s reported plotting is a bridge too far. Choosing Supreme Court justices—the chief arbiters of the law of the land—should not be as casual as slapping your fraternity brother on the back over martinis at the club and landing his son an internship at Goldman. Chalk it up to yet another norm that the Trump White House has obliterated, but one would have hoped that Kennedy, who spent 30 years presiding over some of the most consequential court decisions in American history, might have acted like more than just another white guy.
