Tidbit From Judge Kavanaugh’s Questionnaire

All nominees for Federal judicial nominations submit answers to a standardized questionnaire from the Senate Judiciary Committee. The questionnaire has answers to questions regarding everything from date of birth and education to significant cases in which the nominee participated.

The questionnaire for Judge Brett Kavanaugh has been received by the Senate Judiciary Committee is now online. Scanning through it I found this tidbit. Question 13 (i) asks the nominee to provide citations to significant opinions that he or she authored on federal or state constitutional issues.

Number one on Judge Kavanaugh’s list is his dissent in Heller II (Heller v. District of Columbia, 670 F.3d 1244 (D.C. Circuit, 2011) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting). These citations are not listed in chronological order which would seem to indicate that Judge Kavanaugh considers this dissent one of his most important opinions.

I like that and it speaks well to where he stands on the Second Amendment. It gives me hope that future Second Amendment cases might just get a hearing once Judge Kavanaugh becomes Justice Kavanaugh.

I’ll Side with John Bingham, Thank You Very Much

Dave Hardy has an interesting observation on the dissenters on the McDonald and Heller cases. He notes that taken as a whole, their position is closer to that of Jefferson Davis.

Combined with McDonald…. the “liberal” wing embraces Jefferson Davis, the “conservative” wing embraces John Bingham.

Perhaps we could suggest that in the future, the dissenters refer to 1861-65 as The War of Northern Aggression and the majority refer to it as The War of the Rebellion.

John Bingham, a 19th Century Republican Congressman from Ohio, is known for his role as the principal framer of the Fourteenth Amendment. It is thought that he intended the first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights to apply to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment.