10/11/18

President Trump hosts a swearing-in ceremony tonight at the White House for the newest justice on the Supreme Court. Brett Kavanaugh, who was confirmed over the weekend on a narrow party-line vote,

will be on the bench tomorrow when the Supreme Court holds oral arguments. Kavanaugh promised to serve without bitterness and to put the contentious and emotional confirmation process behind him.

The Supreme Court is a team of nine, and I will always be a team player on the team of nine. President Trump was less conciliatory in his remarks.

Earlier today, he predicted Kavanaugh's position on the high court will give a political boost to Republicans. We'll hear more about that in a moment. But first let's go to NPR's Scott Horsley. Hey, Scott.

Hi, Ailsa. So give us a picture of how Kavanaugh's presence on the court will likely shift its decisions over the next few decades.

He is certainly going to shift it to the right. Remember; he was chosen from a list drawn up by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation of reliable conservatives.

And that's something you couldn't necessarily say about the justice he'll be replacing, Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy of course was Kavanaugh's mentor. He did the swearing in this evening.

And although Kennedy was a Reagan appointee and generally conservative, he occasionally sided with the court's liberal wing, most famously in a string of gay rights cases but also, for example, reaffirming abortion rights.

Kavanaugh is expected to be a more conservative judge, and that leaves Chief Justice John Roberts as the pivot point on the court. It'll be up to him to decide how much judicial restraint to exercise.

And that will determine whether this rightward drift is a matter of small steps or one big leap. Do you think the very bitter confirmation fight over the past several weeks has damaged the court's reputation as an apolitical body?