U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh‘s Catholic faith and education guides his life daily, he recently said.
“There are certain principles — values — that I try to adhere to and think about and live up to,” he said Thursday at The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C. “And I learned these primarily in Catholic school as a kid.”
Kavanaugh addressed an auditorium full of law students during an evening conversation with J. Joel Alicea, associate professor of law and director of the Columbus School of Law’s Center for the Constitution and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition (CIT), which sponsored the event.
During the hour-long discussion, the justice not only focused on his faith but also addressed the Supreme Court’s recent overturning of the Chevron doctrine impacting the regulatory power of federal agencies, the role of the judiciary, originalism and tradition, the impact of past rulings on current cases (precedent and stare decisis), civility and collegiality, virtue, and religious liberty.
He said that the court, during his six years on the bench there, has made “correct and important strides” in the area of religious liberty.
“I think one of the principles that’s been reinforced and elaborated on is that discrimination against religion, against religious people, against religious speech, against religious organizations is not required by the Establishment Clause and indeed is prohibited by the Free Exercise Clause and the Equal Protection Clause,” he said, referring to the First and 14th Amendments and naming past cases such as Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, Shurtleff v. Boston and Carson v. Makin.
Kavanaugh, who was nominated to the nation’s highest court by former President Donald J. Trump in 2018, has spoken at the university before and served as a law school commencement speaker in 2018. He spoke at the CIT event after Justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke for the same program in 2023 and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., delivered the inaugural lecture in 2022.
Four virtues for a justice
Seated in an armchair next to Alicea, his former student at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Kavanaugh shared which virtues he found most important for a Supreme Court justice. Drawing largely from his Catholic education, he named four principles he said he tries to live by.
“The first is, be prepared,” Kavanaugh said, calling it a sign of respect. He remembered a saying from his Latin teacher at Georgetown Preparatory School in North Bethesda, Maryland, that went: “Be prepared, be prepared, you can’t go wrong as you go along if you are prepared.”
Before that, when he attended Mater Dei School in Bethesda, Maryland, he learned from another teacher the importance of standing in someone else’s shoes, he said. That lesson came when, in seventh grade, that teacher had his class read the classic, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Kavanaugh keeps his copy of the book from seventh grade in his office today.
“Inside the front cover, is written the phrase that he thought was the lesson,” Kavanaugh said, “and the lesson was, ‘Stand in someone else’s shoes.'”
To be a good judge, he said, “it’s so important as a judge to try to understand other people’s perspectives” and both sides of a case.
A third lesson came from his music teacher at Georgetown Preparatory School, who regularly sang a Catholic hymn, “Be Not Afraid.” Good judges, Kavanaugh said, must not be afraid.
“Be not afraid to make hard decisions and get criticized and get ridiculed and get mocked,” he said, before adding, “to have backbone, to do the right thing even when it’s the hard thing.”
Judges shouldn’t be swayed or intimidated just because something will be controversial or criticized, he said.
“When you’ve thought about it, you’ve listened to both sides, and you’ve made your decision, and you think it’s the right thing, you got to do it,” he said. “You got to not be afraid to do it.”
The fourth came from his time working under former President George W. Bush, from 2001 to 2006, as associate counsel, then senior associate counsel and then assistant to the president and staff secretary. Despite the pressure and stress that Bush faced after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, he remained positive and optimistic, Kavanaugh said.
“He had a phrase he would say: Live on the sunrise side of the mountain. Live on the east side of the mountain, see the day that is coming, not the day that is gone,” Kavanaugh remembered.
Bush had a painting of the sunrise side of the mountain in the Oval Office all eight years of his presidency, Kavanaugh said. Today, Kavanaugh has a replica in his own office above his desk.
The Catholic intellectual tradition
Kavanaugh spoke about his Catholic background and how it guides his life today. He grew up attending Catholic school (Mater Dei School and Georgetown Preparatory School) and going to church at Little Flower Parish in Bethesda, Maryland. He’s a parishioner at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Washington, D.C., and has volunteered with Catholic Charities.
He said that he tries to reflect daily on Matthew 23:12 in the Bible, which reads “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
“Remember the importance of humility, that you don’t know it all, that you’re trying to learn from others,” Kavanaugh commented.
He also likes to think about Matthew 25 and the importance of serving others or “feeding the hungry and caring for the sick and housing the homeless,” he said.
He remembered another saying from his time volunteering with Catholic Charities, an organization dedicated to helping those in need, regardless of their faith.
“We serve them and we feed them not because they’re Catholic, but because we’re Catholic,” he said. “That’s an important principle, I think, of my broader Catholic faith.”
When he thinks more specifically about the Catholic intellectual tradition, he said that he thinks about the same kinds of principles, starting with Jesus.
“The same kinds of principles of trying to listen to all sides, to try to be open-minded, to try to listen and learn, and to have inquiry and dialogue,” he said.
“For me, the Catholic intellectual tradition builds on the Catholic experience and tradition more generally about being part of a broader community where you listen to others, help others, serve others, learn from others,” he added.
The values of civility and collegiality
One of the big changes he encountered when he joined the Supreme Court, he said, was ruling with eight other judges.
“You spend so much time with eight other people and just those eight other people,” he told law students. “You’re learning a lot in law school about law, but personal dynamics are going to be an important part of your career.”
Today, he said he has “eight spectacular colleagues.” After every oral argument and conference, they eat lunch together , he said, with one rule: They can’t talk about work. Instead, they talk about things like movies, books or current events.
“That glue, that understanding of the other person, helps when you have really tough cases and you have contentious debates,” he said of their friendships.
He stressed the importance of friendships among people who disagree. Recognizing that he spoke at a Catholic university, he said that, beyond consensus building, “the value of civility and collegiality is critically important even if it gets you nothing.”
“It’s important in and of itself,” he said, to be a good person, to stand in another person’s shoes and to show respect for another person.
