Just Who is Brett Kavanaugh?

Most of us remember being transfixed, just one year ago, to the hearings from now Supreme Court Justice Brent Kavanaugh. This week, as the court begins its new term, Justice Kavanaugh will be part of a court deciding on some of the most fundamental cases that affect our politics, our culture, and our freedoms. All in an atmosphere that, if even possible, is even more polarized than it was a year ago.

So who is Brett Kavanaugh? Certainly the one week FBI investigation and the televised circus that was his hearing may not have told the whole story. For that, we must rely on the reporting of Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly in their new book The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation.

My conversation with Robin Pogrebin:

Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

When we think about the Supreme Court, and its hushed, hallowed halls, and John Adams dictum that we are a nation of laws and not of men, words that do not often come to mind are passion, Salsa Dancing, ambition, and people skills. Yet all of these have been a part of the life and Supreme Court tenure of Sonia Sotomayor.

Her story is not just a legal story, it’s the story of the rise of the Latino population in America and it’s ever larger and growing role in the politics of the nation.

Joan Biskupic tells that story in Breaking In: The Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice

My conversation with Joan Biskupic:

Laurence Tribe talks about The Roberts Court and the Constitution

The Supreme Court today is more influential than ever. From Citizens United to the rulings regarding Obamacare and gay marriage, privacy and free speech, the current Court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, has has had profound influence. Yet it remains a mysterious institution. Like Churchill said of the former Soviet Union, it is often a riddle wrapped in an enigma, inside a mystery.

The motivations of the nine men and women who serve for life are often obscure and the internal influences inside the court, are even less transparent.

What is clear, is that the Roberts’ Court, now almost 10 years old, is developing a personality of its own, even while its individual members very often defy the stereotypical roles that the public often assigns to them.

Trying to make sense of this monolithic and opaque institution of men and woman and laws, is Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe in his book Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution.

My conversation with Laurence Tribe:

Why is anyone listening to Antonin Scalia?

Few phrases get used more today than “creative destruction.” What it really reflects though, is simply the way in which the world has changed. Our forefathers, along with the very founders of the country, couldn’t have imaged everyday things like air travel, the interstate highway system, telephones, automobiles or even indoor plumbing. Much less the internet, the splitting of the atom, or globalization.

So how is it that members of the our third branch of government, the Supreme Court, actually hold contemporary debates about constitutional ideas, in the context of what the founders world was once like?

The answer is Antonin Scalia. Appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1986, Scalia, has had a profound influence, far beyond his decisions and the world of Court conferences. His ideas about original intent and originalism have taken hold as a real principle of debate. And that fact alone, may well be his lasting legacy.

As this current court term comes to an end, Law Professor Bruce Allen Murphy tries to understand Scalia in Scalia: A Court of One.

My conversation with Bruce Allen Murphy: