Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh will be confirmed, and it won't be a close vote, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz predicted Monday, while commenting that he wishes politics could be kept out of the confirmation process.
"He will get 54 or 55 votes, I think, because the president selected well," Dershowitz told Fox News' "America's Newsroom."
"If he had picked somebody far less qualified who has strong ideological views it would be a closer vote."
Kavanaugh, a U.S. Circuit Judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, has "extraordinary experience and taught at Harvard, where "the students loved him," said Dershowitz.
"Many of the students, both liberals and conservatives, wrote a petition supporting him," said Dershowitz. "I think unless something comes up that we're not aware of, I'm pretty sure he will be confirmed."
Meanwhile, the country's leaders should be confirming the most qualified people for the higher court without regard to political benefit or gain, said the law professor.
"That's not the way the framers contemplated justices being nominated and confirmed to the Supreme Court," he said. "They had in mind the very best people."
But now, the matter of a Supreme Court justice is "completely political," but all senators should keep an open mind, Dershowitz commented.
"It's all because of Merrick Garland," he said, referring to President Barack Obama's nominee who was blocked in 2016 because of the looming election.
"It's completely political and all senators should keep an open mind," said Dershowitz. "Interview Kavanaugh. Wait to see what he thinks of the tower of precedent, whether he will start overruling cases, and then cast their vote on the basis of the quality of the candidate, not the political advantage or disadvantage they get from voting one way or the other."
Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence over the weekend praised Kavanaugh as a nominee who will pay attention to the strict construction of the Constitution, but Dershowitz said such phrases have become a cliche.
"In Bush versus Gore, the conservatives stretched the Constitution to apply equal protection analysis to the way ballots were counted, each side stretches the Constitution when it serves their interest and reads it narrowly when it serves their interest," said Dershowitz.
Meanwhile, the United States is looking for a person who could potentially be a justice for 20 or 30 years, and nobody knows what the issues will be then, said the professor.
"Abortion may be off the table and we may have developed technologies to eliminate the need for abortion," said Dershowitz. "Gay rights probably will be an issue of historic interest. We don't know what the issues will be.
"That's why we need the most qualified, brilliant, academic, serious people serving on the court without regard to what their current political interests are. Justices tend to change over time."