This is gross. A new book from Ruth Marcus, a Washington Post deputy editorial page editor, details a secret meeting between Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and Donald Trump in April 2017, just before the ceremonial Rose Garden swearing-in of now-Justice Neil Gorsuch. You know, the guy Mitch McConnell stole a Supreme Court seat from President Barack Obama for.
Kennedy asked for the private meeting so that he could tell Trump there was going to be another opening soon—his own seat—and that Trump should consider one of his former clerks, Brett Kavanaugh. "The justice’s message to the president was as consequential as it was straightforward," Marcus writes, "and it was a remarkable insertion by a sitting justice into the distinctly presidential act of judge picking." The rest is ignominious history.
This followed a very early encounter White House adviser Kellyanne Conway had with Kennedy’s son Gregory at the annual white-tie Alfalfa Club dinner, soon after Trump inauguration. His father was thrilled with the election's outcome, Kennedy told Conway. Marcus writes that Justice Kennedy, who had been nominated by President Ronald Reagan, wanted his successor to be named by another Republican president. That gave the Trump team an early heads-up that Trump would have at least two justices to name.
That Kennedy wanted his successor to be named by another Republican isn't so shocking. That he went to the president to request his successor is incredibly unseemly. That's one more argument to be made for real and profound Supreme Court reform by the next Democratic Senate and White House. At the least, the very least, Supreme Court justices who are completely untouchable need to be made to hold to the same judicial code of conduct that the rest of the federal judiciary has to follow.