I'm Elizabeth Slattery and welcome to SCOTUS 101 where we break down what's happening at the Supreme Court,

what the justices are up to, and other things related to our favorite branch of government.

This is a special summer session edition of SCOTUS 101, and today I'm joined by Mike Davis,

who is the Chief Counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mike, thanks for joining me.

Thank you for having me. So did you think this was going to be a calm summer? I, for one,

didn't think Justice Kennedy was going anywhere. I didn't have any advanced warning that he was going

anywhere, but I'm actually pretty excited for this summer. Yeah, I've never been more pleased to have my summer plans, you know, wrecked by a nomination

to the Supreme Court.

I agree.

So tell me about what you and the committee staff have been up to since Kavanaugh's nomination

was announced on July 9th.

Well, we've been busy.

Chairman Chuck Grassley is my boss, and he has, we've hired up a team of lawyers and law clerks on the chairman's staff to process this nomination while we continue to process the lower court nominees through the Senate Judiciary Committee.

So it's been a very, very busy last several weeks.

We are in the midst of gathering and reading

all of Judge Kavanaugh's relevant records

from his service, his legal service,

and the executive branch, along with his 12 years of judicial opinions

for his service on the D.C. Circuit, which is considered the second highest court in the land.

He has written 307 judicial opinions, and he's joined hundreds of others.

So we have 10,000 pages of his judicial

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