When an evasion is really, dangerously, a lie
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s dance around the question of whether he would overrule Roe v. Wade makes one wonder, on what other matter has one of his evasions, stripped of legalistic nuances, amounted to a lie.
Certainly Kavanaugh’s dodge around the Roe issue, that Roe is “settled law,” thus implying it was immune to being found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, is a lie. This was the the lie told to Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a staunch supporter of Roe v. Wade, in what she characterized as a lengthy one-on-one discussion. She reported that Kavanaugh said he regarded Roe as “settled law.”
As one commentator on MSNBC or CNN (sorry I forget which, and who) quipped: “Well, settled law is settled until it isn’t.”
Now, thanks to the recent release of an email heretofore kept under Republican Senate Judiciary Committee wraps as “committee confidential,” we find Kavanaugh, back in 2003, saying “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since [the Supreme] Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so.”
Continue reading “Settled Law, Settled Liar: Mistrust Rising”