Kavanaugh appointment does not make Supreme Court illegitimate

Sam StroudStaff Writer Despite the protests and speculations, Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court on Saturday. Now that stopping Kavanaugh from sitting on the Supreme Court is not possible, the left is claiming the court is no longer legitimate. They say this is true because of the accusations Kavanaugh faced, the fact that Trump picked him and Kavanaugh’s personal political ideology. These arguments, however, hold no merit and do not in any way affect the legitimacy of the court. With Kavanaugh’s appointment, the president is not attempting to shield himself from impeachment. Anyone who thinks this needs to pick up a seventh-grade civics textbook. Donald Trump picked Kavanaugh because he needed to make both Ted Cruz and Susan Collins happy with one nominee. It had nothing to do with Kavanaugh’s stance on executive power or his theories on whether a sitting president can be indicted. Kavanaugh’s critics point to a 2009 article he wrote saying Congress should create laws to prevent a sitting president from being investigated or prosecuted. According to his critics, this is proof he should not be able to serve on the court. The problem here is that Kavanaugh’s beliefs do not drive the impeachment process. The Senate is the governing body which decides whether the president of the United States is guilty of a crime, not the Supreme Court. All these reasons pale in comparison to what Democrats insist is the biggest factor making the court illegitimate. They say the appointment of Kavanaugh has pushed the court to the right. Why does the fact that a 5-4 right of center majority make the court illegitimate as opposed to a 5-4 center left majority, which would be the case had Merrick Garland been confirmed? The answer is very simple: Kavanaugh has a conservative bias, one the left views as incorrect and therefore illegitimate. A justice cannot become illegitimate because of their personal views. Nobody in their right mind would claim Ruth Bader Ginsburg is unbiased. Nobody would claim any of the Supreme Court justices appointed by the Democrats are unbiased. The court has flipped back and forth from liberal to conservative majorities reflecting the political environment. We are at a moment in history where the conservatives have the majority. When they lose that majority, the court will not magically regain its legitimacy. It would never have lost it. No matter what the left says, the Supreme Court is still a perfectly legitimate institution. Kavanaugh is not guilty of anything, Trump’s supposed motives for selecting him don’t hold water and claiming a conservative court is not legitimate because they don’t have the same views as the left is simply not a valid argument. This insistence is nothing more than a coping mechanism for factions on the left which will do anything to stop Kavanaugh and the rest of his “evil right-wing pals.” The politics played by the Democrats is driven by manipulating feelings, but that doesn’t matter; facts don’t have anything on feelings. If we’ve learned anything from the Democrats in the last two weeks, it’s that.