Big Law Stars Will Laud Kavanaugh, as Parkland Survivor & Nixon Whistleblower Raise Doubt
Big Law appellate stars, a Yale Law School professor and a federal public defender are among those set to speak in support of Brett Kavanaugh next week. The Democrats have lined up a Parkland shooting survivor, a lawyer for an immigrant teen in an abortion case and John Dean, the former Nixon White House counsel turned whistleblower.
August 30, 2018 at 07:12 PM
6 minute read
More than two dozen witnesses are scheduled to testify either for or in opposition to Brett Kavanaugh, the Trump administration's nominee to succeed Anthony Kennedy on the U.S. Supreme Court, according to a list the Senate Judiciary Committee released Thursday.
Prominent Washington appellate advocates from big firms will make appearances starting this week in support of Kavanaugh, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit since 2006. He will also win support from former law clerks, a former student and one of his Yale Law School roommates.
Witnesses testifying for Senate Democrats include John Dean, the former White House counsel to Richard Nixon; a survivor of the Parkland, Florida, high-school mass shooting; counsel to pregnant, undocumented teens in U.S. detention facilities, and legal scholars on executive power and environmental law.
What follows is a snapshot of some of the lawyers and others who are scheduled to testify next week.
|Testifying in support of Kavanaugh…
➤➤ Big Law appellate stars. The speakers will include former U.S. Solicitors General Ted Olson from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Paul Clement of Kirkland & Ellis. Maureen Mahoney of Latham & Watkins, a former deputy U.S. solicitor, will also testify in support of Kavanaugh. Lisa Blatt of Arnold & Porter will introduce Kavanaugh at the start of his confirmation hearing. Clement recently argued a religious discrimination case in front of Kavanaugh, who will be recused if the matter reaches the Supreme Court.
➤➤ Former law clerks. Williams & Connolly associate Luke McCloud will testify in support of Kavanaugh, in addition to former clerk Jennifer Mascott, a professor at the George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School. “He's a voice the justices are going to be primed to listen to,” McCloud, who later clerked for Justice Sonia Sotomayor, told the Wall Street Journal in July. Former Kavanaugh clerk Rebecca Taibleson, now an assistant U.S. attorney in Wisconsin, will also testify for Kavanaugh.
➤➤ The Yale Law connection. Liberal law professor Akhil Amar is scheduled to speak in favor of Kavanaugh. Amar taught Kavanaugh at Yale. In July, he wrote a New York Times op-ed that called President Donald Trump's nomination of Kavanaugh “his classiest move.” Amar told the NLJ he received “a lot of hate mail” after the op-ed posted. One of Kavanaugh's Yale Law roommates, Kenneth Christmas, now vice president for legal affairs at MarVista Entertainment, will speak in favor of Kavanaugh. “Brett and I were two of the ones that looked upon [watching 'Jeopardy'] with disdain,” the former roommate, Christmas, told Yale Daily News last month.
➤➤ Kavanaugh the law school prof. One of Kavanaugh's Harvard Law School students, Colleen Roh Sinzdak, a senior associate at Hogan Lovells, is set to testify. “Taking Judge Kavanaugh's separation of powers class was one of the highlights of my time at HLS,” she told Harvard Law Today last month. “Judge Kavanaugh was a wonderful professor. He was clearly enthusiastic about the subject matter, and he encouraged us to explore the issues from all angles.”
➤➤ A federal criminal defender. A.J. Kramer, the top federal public defender in D.C., is on the Republican majority's witness list. Kramer's deputies get to argue regularly in the D.C. Circuit, where administrative cases mix with criminal challenges arising from prosecutions in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “Kavanaugh sometimes rules for defendants, occasionally in surprising ways,” UC Hastings law professor Rory Little wrote this week at SCOTUSblog.
|…And testifying for the Democratic minority:
➤➤ A Watergate whistleblower. John Dean, former White House counsel to President Richard Nixon—and who was involved in and blew the whistle on the Watergate cover-up—is a columnist and frequent critic of the Trump administration. He can be expected to criticize the Kavanaugh nomination while the special counsel investigation of Russian election interference is ongoing.
➤➤ A pregnant immigrant teen's lawyer. Rochelle Garza, managing partner in Garza & Garza in Brownsville, Texas, likely will offer her experience in an abortion case that went before Kavanaugh. She represented Jane Doe, a pregnant, undocumented teenager who sought an abortion while in government detention. Garza, along with lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, fought in federal court the Trump administration's refusal to allow Doe to leave detention in order to have an abortion that was approved by Texas courts. Her case, Garza v. Hargan, went to the D.C. Circuit where, with Kavanaugh dissenting, the en banc majority allowed the abortion to go forward.
➤➤ “Parkland Strong.” Kavanaugh's strong position on the Second Amendment will be reviewed through the eyes of Aalayah Eastmond of Parkland, Florida, a survivor of the mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February. She has been an activist since then in favor of curbing gun violence, expansion of background checks and bans on assault-style weapons.
➤➤ Executive power expert. Peter Shane of Ohio State University Moritz College of Law is a nationally recognized expert on separation of powers and executive power—another likely focus of the Kavanaugh hearings. Shane, a former attorney in the Reagan Justice Department, is author of “Too Much Presidential Power” and “Madison's Nightmare: How Executive Power Threatens American Democracy.”
➤➤ Health care activist. Twelve-year-old Jackson Corbin of Hanover, Pennsylvania, has been lobbying Congress and state legislators against cuts in the Medicaid program. Kavanaugh's views on the Affordable Care Act, which expanded the Medicaid program, are another likely focus of senators' questions. Jackson and his younger brother have Noonan syndrome, a genetic disorder affecting the heart, digestive system and the inability of the blood to clot.
Read more:
This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.
To view this content, please continue to their sites.
Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
NOT FOR REPRINT
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
You Might Like
View AllHolland & Knight, Akin, Crowell, Barnes and Day Pitney Add to DC Practices
3 minute read'There Is No Time to Waste': Matt Gaetz Withdraws From AG Nomination
3 minute readRead the Document: 'Google Must Divest Chrome,' DOJ Says, Proposing Remedies in Search Monopoly Case
3 minute readTrending Stories
- 1Gibson Dunn Sued By Crypto Client After Lateral Hire Causes Conflict of Interest
- 2Trump's Solicitor General Expected to 'Flip' Prelogar's Positions at Supreme Court
- 3Pharmacy Lawyers See Promise in NY Regulator's Curbs on PBM Industry
- 4Outgoing USPTO Director Kathi Vidal: ‘We All Want the Country to Be in a Better Place’
- 5Supreme Court Will Review Constitutionality Of FCC's Universal Service Fund
Who Got The Work
Michael G. Bongiorno, Andrew Scott Dulberg and Elizabeth E. Driscoll from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr have stepped in to represent Symbotic Inc., an A.I.-enabled technology platform that focuses on increasing supply chain efficiency, and other defendants in a pending shareholder derivative lawsuit. The case, filed Oct. 2 in Massachusetts District Court by the Brown Law Firm on behalf of Stephen Austen, accuses certain officers and directors of misleading investors in regard to Symbotic's potential for margin growth by failing to disclose that the company was not equipped to timely deploy its systems or manage expenses through project delays. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton, is 1:24-cv-12522, Austen v. Cohen et al.
Who Got The Work
Edmund Polubinski and Marie Killmond of Davis Polk & Wardwell have entered appearances for data platform software development company MongoDB and other defendants in a pending shareholder derivative lawsuit. The action, filed Oct. 7 in New York Southern District Court by the Brown Law Firm, accuses the company's directors and/or officers of falsely expressing confidence in the company’s restructuring of its sales incentive plan and downplaying the severity of decreases in its upfront commitments. The case is 1:24-cv-07594, Roy v. Ittycheria et al.
Who Got The Work
Amy O. Bruchs and Kurt F. Ellison of Michael Best & Friedrich have entered appearances for Epic Systems Corp. in a pending employment discrimination lawsuit. The suit was filed Sept. 7 in Wisconsin Western District Court by Levine Eisberner LLC and Siri & Glimstad on behalf of a project manager who claims that he was wrongfully terminated after applying for a religious exemption to the defendant's COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The case, assigned to U.S. Magistrate Judge Anita Marie Boor, is 3:24-cv-00630, Secker, Nathan v. Epic Systems Corporation.
Who Got The Work
David X. Sullivan, Thomas J. Finn and Gregory A. Hall from McCarter & English have entered appearances for Sunrun Installation Services in a pending civil rights lawsuit. The complaint was filed Sept. 4 in Connecticut District Court by attorney Robert M. Berke on behalf of former employee George Edward Steins, who was arrested and charged with employing an unregistered home improvement salesperson. The complaint alleges that had Sunrun informed the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection that the plaintiff's employment had ended in 2017 and that he no longer held Sunrun's home improvement contractor license, he would not have been hit with charges, which were dismissed in May 2024. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer, is 3:24-cv-01423, Steins v. Sunrun, Inc. et al.
Who Got The Work
Greenberg Traurig shareholder Joshua L. Raskin has entered an appearance for boohoo.com UK Ltd. in a pending patent infringement lawsuit. The suit, filed Sept. 3 in Texas Eastern District Court by Rozier Hardt McDonough on behalf of Alto Dynamics, asserts five patents related to an online shopping platform. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, is 2:24-cv-00719, Alto Dynamics, LLC v. boohoo.com UK Limited.
Featured Firms
Law Offices of Gary Martin Hays & Associates, P.C.
(470) 294-1674
Law Offices of Mark E. Salomone
(857) 444-6468
Smith & Hassler
(713) 739-1250