Kavanaugh suggested Roe v. Wade is not 'settled law' in leaked email from 2003

Newly released emails show that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh advised against calling Roe v. Wade the "settled law of the land."

Critics have been suspiciously eyeing Kavanaugh over his views on Roe, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that determined that access to abortion is a constitutional right. While he told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that he respected that Roe represented an important precedent, an old email leaked to The New York Times on Thursday shows that he once implied otherwise.

Kavanaugh wrote the email in 2003, when he was working as a White House lawyer in the Bush administration. He disputed a line in an opinion piece on an appeals court nominee that said that "it is widely accepted by legal scholars across the board that Roe v. Wade and its progeny are the settled law of the land." Kavanaugh suggested removing the line, writing that he was "not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so."

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Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) grilled Kavanaugh about the email Thursday, asking him to explain whether he believed Roe is settled or not. The nominee said he was simply disputing the accuracy of the statement that all legal scholars agree about Roe, not his own views. He has not said whether he believes Roe was correctly decided, but has said that the case has been "reaffirmed many times."