Samuel Moyn

The nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is on the knife’s edge. The stakes are higher than for the confirmation of any American judge in our lifetimes. For that reason alone, it is probably not a good time to stage a general debate whether and in what sense law is something more than politics by other means. But I would conduct it by separating out the sort of high stakes judicial appointments and decisionmaking that has attracted everyone’s interest in the past few weeks.