During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) subjected several judicial nominees to his characteristic brand of intense, fast-paced questioning, testing their legal knowledge and judicial philosophies.
The session covered a wide range of legal scenarios, from hypothetical negligence cases to the intricacies of statutory interpretation.
Kennedy first questioned nominee Mr. Coleman, posing a hypothetical involving protesters blocking traffic on Manhattan’s Third Avenue. He asked whether the family of a transplant patient who died because an ambulance was stuck in the protest-induced gridlock would have a legal claim against the organizers.
“Does the patient’s family have a cause of action against the protesters or the leader of the protest?” Kennedy asked. When Coleman hesitated to “prejudge” the situation, Kennedy pushed for a legal opinion, calling it a “first-year law student question.”
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Coleman eventually identified “causation and foreseeability” as the primary legal hurdles, explaining the difference between “cause in fact” and “proximate cause.”
Kennedy then turned his attention to Judge Powell, focusing on his self-identification as a “textualist.” He questioned the threshold for when a statute becomes “ambiguous” enough to warrant looking at secondary sources or legislative history.
“Why don’t you want to look to the problem that the legislature was trying to solve?” Kennedy asked. “Why do you want to be a slave to the plain words?”
Powell maintained that the “plain meaning of the words” must guide a judge first, and that one cannot go further if the language is clear, as it represents the “will of the people.”
The hearing also included a sharp exchange with the nominee, Tony Mativi, regarding religious freedom in the private sector. Kennedy presented a scenario where a 17-year-old applying to McDonald’s is told she cannot wear a burka due to a company policy against religious symbols.
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“Who’s going to win: McDonald’s or the person wearing the burka?” Kennedy asked.
Mativi initially suggested the law prohibits religious tests by the government rather than private employers, but eventually stated, “Senator, I’m not sure who would win in that situation; I’d need to know more facts.”
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