Kavanaugh on SCOTUS: Divide Is Overplayed in Media

You might think things are contentious on the Supreme Court, given the apparent division along party lines of the nine justices. But, speaking at an event for Notre Dame's law school this week, Justice Brett Kavanaugh insisted that's not the case, NBC News and CNN report. "There are great relations among all nine justices both personally and professionally. We only get tough cases, and we disagree on some of those. I think that's more nuanced than it is sometimes portrayed," he said, going on to praise his liberal colleagues, including the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the recently retired Stephen Breyer.

Those two "couldn't have been better at welcoming me to the court," he said of his 2018 nomination and confirmation. He also highlighted several decisions in which conservative justices joined liberal justices. "We work well together, we get along together," he said. SCOTUSblog, however, notes that of the 66 cases the court heard in its most recent term, 14 of them ended in 6-3 decisions along the expected ideological lines. And the percentage of unanimous decisions was at its lowest in two decades at 29%. Kavanaugh, however, didn't sound concerned: "I’m optimistic about the court, I’m optimistic about the country, I’m optimistic about my colleagues." (More US Supreme Court stories.)