On September 7, Professor Melissa Murray testified at the US Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the US District Court for the District of Columbia Circuit. At the beginning of her remarks, Murray told the US Senate Judiciary Committee that she concurred with others who had described Judge Kavanaugh as friendly and charming. “But this nomination is not about whom I would befriend or with whom I would have lunch,” noted Murray, who joined NYU Law as a full-time, tenured faculty member this summer. “It is about real people on the ground [who will] depend on Judge Kavanaugh to protect their constitutional rights to make decisions about their lives.”
A constitutional law scholar and expert in reproductive rights, Murray said that Judge Kavanaugh’s record suggests “he will provide the necessary fifth vote that would utterly eviscerate the right to abortion.” That right was established in the Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, and Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination, she said, “is the culmination of [a] decades-long effort to destroy Roe v. Wade incrementally, without necessarily formally overruling it.”
Posted September 10, 2018