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Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

This is flippant and non-helpful. If you disagree with how his record is characterized, then please post counter examples. But let me post the following:

+ Rejected challenges to NSA authority

+ Rejected workers rights to picket

+ Opinionated diverting public funds to religion schools

+ Rejected meat labeling requirements

+ Repeatedly restricted the EPA

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/09/brett-kavanaugh-tr...

Kavanaugh is highly anti-consumer. That he's sided with consumers in this case is very surprising to me.

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None of your examples are about how he looks at the particular issues in this case though. You've arbitrarily grouped this case with the several others above by putting them all on an axis of whether he's anti-consumer or pro-consumer. You may choose to perceive justices on these ideological axes, but these ideological axes are probably not what determines how they vote, even if there are sometimes strong correlations.

It doesn't matter the theory driving his votes, it matters the outcome. If you vote against say, civil rights, because you have some super-nuanced view about how the court can or can not be involved in respect to state politics, you're still propping up Jim Crow laws.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

> The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I strongly agree.

To focus on preferred outcomes rather than strong first principles is a good intention on the path to hell.

Read up on Baker v Carr which touched on the issue of redistricting. Specifically on whether the court could intervene in a state perogative case. On one side were a set of justices who believed that the court couldn't since they would be interfering in state matters. On the other side were justices who believed the court was the only possible body who could restore the voting power of minorities.

Strong first principles are great when we're arguing philosophy but it's pretty bad when we're preventing millions from exercising a fundamental right. The soldier who carries out atrocities because he believes in the duty of following orders is no less guilty of the atrocity.

This doesn't mean that the end justifies the means but it means that we must judge our course of action and the actions of others with their full weight, not only intention or goal but the direct cost too.

> Kavanaugh is highly anti-consumer. That he's sided with consumers in this case is very surprising to me.

I think it's a bit disingenuous to assume partisanship on the basis of a <1 year voting record. That's a serious charge to levy against a judge, as it implies he/she is violating his/her judicial oath by failing to "administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich".

It's rather unfortunate that courts have become the foci of partisan politics. It reflect the reality that Congress has been effectively abdicating their duty as the ones who must write the law.

Brett_Kavanaugh: U.S._Circuit_Judge_(2006–2018) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Kavanaugh#U.S._Circuit_J...

My comment was not flippant at all, and it appeared it was very helpful, because it caused you to actually dig in to why you might be surprised that Kavanaugh sided the way he did, and you are the first (and only) person in the thread to do so.

> Opinionated diverting public funds to religion schools

This one is pro-consumer, not anti consumer.

Those issues are not relevant to the current one, which is the whole point. Extrapolating what he would do in this monopolistic/monopsonistic case based on EPA and labor law rulings is... a stretch.

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