“I want someone who is willing to protect the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights and understands that the Bill of Rights is not an a la carte menu.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, in the Senate Judiciary Committee, U.S. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) delivered his opening statement on Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

Click here or the photo below to watch Sen. Kennedy’s full remarks:

What Sen. Kennedy is seeking in a Supreme Court justice: I want a judge. I don’t want a politician. I am not looking for an ideologue.  I’m not looking for a hater.  What I am looking for is somebody who is whip-smart, who is intellectually curious, who writes cleanly and crisply, who knows what a semicolon is for and who is willing to protect the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights and understands that the Bill of Rights is not an a la carte menu. 

Anger is dividing this country: We’ve been divided before and we’ll be divided again.  We will survive this, but I confess that the division in our country today seems to be especially sharp.  And what concerns me so much about the division is the basis for it.  It’s not honest disagreement.  So much of it is anger.

Judges aren’t there to bypass the ballot: It’s not the United States Supreme Court that’s supposed to fix this country culturally, economically, socially, spiritually.  It’s almost become cliché, but the role of a judge is - or at least should be – to determine what the law is and not what the law ought to be.  Judges are not put there to try to bypass the ballot.  Courts should not try to fix problems that are within the province of the United States Congress.

Leave politics out of it: So many Americans believe that the law, which I think all of us revere, has just become politics pursued in another way.  That’s not the way it’s supposed to be.  That’s not what I’m looking for.

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