Trump Nominates Kavanaugh Defender Who Was Still In Law School During Obama's Presidency

We know Donald Trump likes 'em young, but this is getting ridiculous.

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As soon as this guy can say: ‘Maybe somebody else tried to rape her,” Mitch McConnell will have a job for him. (image via Getty)

Justin Reed Walker is a Donald Trump judicial nominee to fill a seat in the Western District of Kentucky, Mitch McConnell’s home state. His confirmation hearing is scheduled for tomorrow. As I can tell, the man’s only qualification for being a federal judge is that he defended Brett Kavanaugh in the media, a lot.

Walker graduated from Harvard Law School in 2009. After that he clerked for (wait for it) Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. After that, he clerked for Anthony Kennedy on the U.S. Supreme Court. After that… well there hasn’t really BEEN much after that because Trump and McConnell are nominating a judge who is a mere ten years out of law school.

Does he have a record of judicial opinions? No, he’s never been a judge.

Does he have significant legal scholarship to speak of? No, he’s only been a professor at the University of Louisville for four years.

Does he have significant litigation or practitioner experience? No, but he did summer at Gibson Dunn and went back there for a year after his SCOTUS clerkship, probably just to get his clerkship bonus before he bounced.

What makes this 39-year-old white man deserving a job from which he can never be fired? Well, according to his judicial questionnaire, homeboy was all over the Kavanaugh hearings. He wrote articles, did radio hits, and got on the T.V. to talk about how great of a guy Brett Kavanaugh is and how unfair people were being to the man accused of attempted rape and perjury. Here’s just a glimpse of his Kavanaugh fawning:

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Judge Brett Kavanaugh should be the next Supreme Court justice. He has by far the strongest, most consistent, most fearless record of constitutional conservatism of any federal court of appeals judge in the country.

Over 12 years and 300 opinions, he has repeatedly fought for principles of textualism and originalism, reined in regulatory overreach, and ensured that administrative bureaucrats are accountable to the elected president. Nominating Kavanaugh would continue President Trump’s exemplary record of selecting the best-qualified person for the Supreme Court, as he did with his brilliant choice of Justice Neil Gorsuch.

I wouldn’t write such saccharine tripe about my wife, and if I did she’d lose respect for me.

In any event, we know how the Republican game works: defend Brett Kavanaugh, get a law job, for you or your family member. I swear to God, if F.B.I. director Christopher Wray ever retires, they’re going to give the job to Ed Whelan.

But there’s another trend going on here, and that is the Trump/McConnell insistence that new federal judges be as young as possible, so that they may promote the Republican agenda long into a future that will be politically run by Millennials. We saw this with Allison Jones Rushing, who was placed on the Fourth Circuit despite having only seven years of actual legal practice under her belt. And we’re seeing it here with Walker who is only 39 and has done nothing of professional note.

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge is also 39 years old. Even he will have to wait longer than Justin Walker before being allowed to wield unaccountable power for the rest of his natural life.

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Undoing what Trump and McConnell have done to the courts will take a generation of work.

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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