A Conservative Court Push Decades in the Making, With Effects for Decades to Come

© Al Drago for The New York Times

“It’ll be the first time we can really say we have a conservative court, really the first time since the 1930s,” the head of a conservative activist group said.

By PETER BAKER, The New York Times
WASHINGTON

[post_ads]President Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court on Monday culminates a three-decade project unparalleled in American history to install a reliable conservative majority on the nation’s highest tribunal, one that could shape the direction of the law for years to come.

All of the years of vetting and grooming and lobbying and list-making by conservative legal figures frustrated by Republican appointees who drifted to the left arguably has come down to this moment, when they stand on the precipice of appointing a fifth justice who, they hope, will finally establish a bench committed to their principles.

“They’ve been pushing back for 30 years, and, obviously, the announcement tonight is a big step in the right direction,” said Curt Levey, the president of the Committee for Justice, a conservative activist group, who has been working toward this goal full time since 2005. “It’ll be the first time we can really say we have a conservative court, really the first time since the 1930s.”

President Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court on Monday culminates a three-decade project unparalleled in American history to install a reliable conservative majority on the nation’s highest tribunal, one that could shape the direction of the law for years to come.

All of the years of vetting and grooming and lobbying and list-making by conservative legal figures frustrated by Republican appointees who drifted to the left arguably has come down to this moment, when they stand on the precipice of appointing a fifth justice who, they hope, will finally establish a bench committed to their principles.

“They’ve been pushing back for 30 years, and, obviously, the announcement tonight is a big step in the right direction,” said Curt Levey, the president of the Committee for Justice, a conservative activist group, who has been working toward this goal full time since 2005. “It’ll be the first time we can really say we have a conservative court, really the first time since the 1930s.”
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