title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Kavanaugh studied history at Yale University, where he joined Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He then attended Yale Law School, after which he began his career as a law clerk working under Judge Ken Starr. After Starr left the D.C. Circuit to become the head of the Office of Independent Counsel, Kavanaugh assisted him with investigations concerning President Bill Clinton, including drafting the "Starr Report" recommending Clinton's impeachment. After the 2000 U.S. presidential election—in which he worked for George W. Bush's campaign in the Florida recount—he joined the Bush administration as White House staff secretary and was a central figure in its efforts to identify and confirm judicial nominees. Bush nominated Kavanaugh to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2003. His confirmation hearings were contentious and stalled for three years over charges of partisanship. Kavanaugh was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit in May 2006. Two law professors performed an evaluation of Kavanaugh's appellate court decisions in four separate public policy areas for "The Washington Post". It found he had been "one of the most conservative judges on the D.C. Circuit" from 2003 to 2018.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: President Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court on July 9, 2018, to fill the position vacated by retiring associate justice Anthony Kennedy. Later in July, Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in the early 1980s. Three other women also accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, one of whom later recanted her story. None of the accusations were corroborated by eyewitness testimony, and Kavanaugh denied them. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a supplemental hearing over Ford's allegations. Afterward, it voted 11–10 along party lines to advance the confirmation to a full Senate vote. On October 6, the full Senate confirmed Kavanaugh by a vote of 50–48, with one Democrat voting to confirm and one Republican in opposition but not voting.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Since the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020, Kavanaugh has come to be regarded, along with Chief Justice John Roberts, as a swing vote on the Court. Kavanaugh became the "median justice" of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 according to a study by professors at three prominent law schools and published by the National Academy of Sciences. After voting in "New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen" and "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization", he was the target of an assassination attempt in June 2022. The suspect had hoped to disrupt potential rulings on the two cases.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Kavanaugh was born on February 12, 1965, in Washington, D.C., the son of Martha Gamble ("née" Murphy) and Everett Edward Kavanaugh Jr. He is of Irish Catholic descent on both sides of his family. His paternal great-grandfather immigrated to the United States from Roscommon, Ireland, in the late 19th century, and his maternal Irish lineage goes back to his great-great-grandparents settling in New Jersey. Kavanaugh's father was a lawyer and served as the president of the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association for two decades. His mother was a history teacher at Woodson and McKinley high schools in Washington in the 1960s and 1970s. She earned a law degree from American University in 1978 and served from 1995 to 2001 as a Maryland Circuit Court judge in Montgomery County, Maryland.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Kavanaugh was raised in Bethesda, Maryland. As a teenager, he attended Georgetown Preparatory School, a Jesuit boys' college prep school, where he was two years ahead of Neil Gorsuch, with whom he later clerked at the Supreme Court and eventually served with as a Supreme Court justice. He was captain of the basketball team and was a wide receiver and cornerback on the football team. Kavanaugh was also friends with classmate Mark Judge; both were in the same class with Maryland state senator Richard Madaleno. In his yearbook Kavanaugh called himself a "Renate Alumnius", a reference to a female student at a nearby Catholic school.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: After graduating from Georgetown Prep in 1983, Kavanaugh went to Yale University, as had his paternal grandfather. Several of Kavanaugh's Yale classmates remembered him as a "serious but not showy student" who loved sports, especially basketball. He unsuccessfully tried out for the Yale Bulldogs men's basketball team and later played for two years on the junior varsity team. He wrote articles about basketball and other sports for the "Yale Daily News", and was a member of the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon. He graduated from Yale in 1987 with a Bachelor of Arts "cum laude" in history.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Kavanaugh then attended Yale Law School, where he lived in a group house with future judge James E. Boasberg and played basketball with professor George L. Priest (sponsor of the school's Federalist Society). He was a member of the "Yale Law Journal" and served as a notes editor during his third year. Kavanaugh graduated from Yale Law with a Juris Doctor degree in 1990.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Kavanaugh served as a law clerk for Judge Walter King Stapleton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 1990 to 1991. During his clerkship, Stapleton wrote the majority opinion in "Planned Parenthood v. Casey", in which the Third Circuit upheld many of Pennsylvania's abortion restrictions. Kavanaugh then clerked for Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1991 to 1992. Yale Law professor George Priest recommended Kavanaugh to Kozinski, who was regarded as a feeder judge. Kavanaugh interviewed for a clerkship with Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the U.S. Supreme Court during the 1992 term, but was not offered a clerkship.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: After working as a summer associate for the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson, Kavanaugh earned a one-year fellowship with the Solicitor General of the United States, Ken Starr, from 1992 to 1993. He then clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy from 1993 to 1994, alongside fellow Georgetown Prep alumnus Neil Gorsuch and with future Judge Gary Feinerman.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: After his Supreme Court clerkship, Kavanaugh again worked for Ken Starr until 1997 as an Associate Counsel in the Office of the Independent Counsel with colleagues Rod Rosenstein and Alex Azar. In that capacity, he reopened an investigation into the 1993 gunshot death of Vincent Foster. After three years, the investigation concluded that Foster had committed suicide. In a September 2018 "New York Times" op-ed, Princeton University history professor Sean Wilentz criticized Kavanaugh for having invested federal money and other resources into investigating partisan conspiracy theories surrounding the cause of Foster's death.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: After working in private practice in 1997–98, Kavanaugh rejoined Starr as an Associate Counselor in 1998. In "Swidler & Berlin v. United States" (1998), Kavanaugh argued his first and only case before the Supreme Court. Arguing for Starr's office, Kavanaugh asked the Court to disregard attorney–client privilege in relation to the investigation of Foster's death. The court rejected Kavanaugh's arguments by a vote of 6–3.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Kavanaugh was a principal author of the "Starr Report", released in September 1998, on the Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky sex scandal; the report argued on broad grounds for Clinton's impeachment. Kavanaugh had urged Starr to ask Clinton sexually graphic questions, and described Clinton as being involved in "a conspiracy to obstruct justice", having "disgraced his office" and "lied to the American people". The report provided extensive and explicit descriptions of each of Clinton's sexual encounters with Lewinsky, a level of detail the authors called "essential" to the case against Clinton.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In December 2000, Kavanaugh joined the legal team of George W. Bush, which was trying to stop the ballot recount in Florida. After Bush became president in January 2001, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales hired Kavanaugh as an associate. There, Kavanaugh worked on the Enron scandal, the successful nomination of Chief Justice John Roberts, and the unsuccessful nomination of Miguel Estrada. Starting in July 2003, he served as Assistant to the President and White House staff secretary, succeeding Harriet Miers. In that position he was responsible for coordinating all documents going to and from the president.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: From 1997 to 1998, Kavanaugh was an associate at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis. Kavanaugh rejoined Kirkland & Ellis in 1999 and eventually became a partner. While there in 2000, he was "pro bono" counsel of record for relatives of Elián González, a six-year-old rescued Cuban boy. After the boy's mother's death at sea, his relatives in the U.S. wanted to keep him from returning to the care of his sole surviving parent, his father in Cuba. Kavanaugh was among a series of lawyers who unsuccessfully sought to stop efforts to repatriate González to Cuba. The district court, Circuit Court and Supreme Court all followed precedent, refusing to block the repatriation.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Also at Kirkland & Ellis, Kavanaugh authored two amicus briefs to the Supreme Court that supported religious activities and expressions in public places. The first, in "Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe" (2000), argued that a student speaker at football games voted for by a majority of students should be treated as private speech in a limited public forum; the second, in "Good News Club v. Milford Central School", argued that a Christian Bible instruction program should have the same after-school access to school facilities as other non-curriculum-related student groups.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Kavanaugh has been a member of the Federalist Society since 1988. In the administration of George W. Bush, he held a key position that involved judicial appointments. Bush judicial nominees who were Federalist Society members included John Roberts and Samuel Alito, both appointed to the Supreme Court, and about half the judges appointed to the courts of appeals.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: President George W. Bush nominated Kavanaugh to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on July 25, 2003, but his nomination stalled in the Senate for nearly three years. Democratic senators accused him of being too partisan, with Senator Dick Durbin calling him the "Forrest Gump of Republican politics". In 2003, the American Bar Association had rated Kavanaugh "well qualified" (its highest category), but after doing dozens more interviews in 2006, downgraded him to "qualified".


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: The Senate Judiciary Committee recommended he be confirmed on a 10–8 party-line vote on May 11, 2006, and he was confirmed by the Senate on May 26 by a vote of 57–36. Kavanaugh was sworn in on June 1. He was the fourth judge nominated to the D.C. Circuit by Bush and confirmed. Kavanaugh began hearing cases on September 11 and had his formal investiture on September 27.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In July 2007, senators Patrick Leahy and Dick Durbin accused Kavanaugh of lying to the Judiciary Committee when he denied being involved in formulating the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies. In 2002, Kavanaugh had told other White House lawyers that he believed Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy would not approve of denying legal counsel to prisoners detained as enemy combatants. The issue reemerged in July 2018 after Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: On the 14 occasions on which Kavanaugh authored opinions that were considered by the Supreme Court, the Court adopted his position 13 times and reversed his position once. These included cases involving environmental regulations, criminal procedure, the separation of powers and extraterritorial jurisdiction in human rights abuse cases. He was regarded as a feeder judge.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In the October 2017 decision "Garza v. Hargan", Kavanaugh joined an unsigned, divided panel of the D.C. Circuit in holding that the Office of Refugee Resettlement does not violate an unaccompanied alien minor's constitutional right to an abortion by requiring that she first be appointed a sponsor before traveling to obtain the abortion, provided "the process of securing a sponsor to whom the minor is released occurs expeditiously." Days later, the "en banc" D.C. Circuit reversed that judgment, with Kavanaugh dissenting. In his dissent, he criticized the majority for creating "a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand". The girl then obtained an abortion. In 2018, in a follow-up petition from the Solicitor General of the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the "en banc" D.C. Circuit's judgment and the girl's claim was ultimately dismissed as moot and does not serve as precedent.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In November 2011, Kavanaugh dissented when the D.C. Circuit upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), arguing that the court lacked jurisdiction in the case. In his dissent, he compared the individual mandate to a tax. After a unanimous panel found that the ACA did not violate the Constitution's Origination Clause in "Sissel v. United States Department of Health & Human Services" (2014), Kavanaugh wrote a long dissent from the denial of rehearing "en banc". In May 2015, he dissented from a decision that denied an en banc rehearing of "Priests for Life v. HHS", in which the panel upheld the ACA's contraceptive mandate accommodations against Priests for Lifes Religious Freedom Restoration Act claims. In "Zubik v. Burwell" (2016), the Supreme Court vacated the circuit's judgment in a per curiam decision.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In August 2008, Kavanaugh dissented when the D.C. Circuit found that the Constitution's Appointments Clause did not prevent the Sarbanes–Oxley Act from creating a board whose members were not directly removable by the president. In "Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board" (2010), the Supreme Court reversed the circuit court's judgment by a vote of 5–4.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In 2015, Kavanaugh found that those directly regulated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) could challenge the constitutionality of its design. In October 2016, he wrote for a divided panel finding that the CFPB's design was unconstitutional, and made the CFPB director removable by the president of the United States. In January 2018, the "en banc" D.C. Circuit reversed that judgment by a vote of 7–3, over Kavanaugh's dissent.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In 2013, Kavanaugh issued an extraordinary writ of "mandamus" requiring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to process the license application of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, over the dissent of Judge Merrick Garland. In April 2014, Kavanaugh dissented when the court found that Labor Secretary Tom Perez could issue workplace safety citations against SeaWorld regarding the multiple killings of its workers by Tilikum, an orca.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: After Kavanaugh wrote for a divided panel striking down a Clean Air Act regulation, the Supreme Court reversed by a vote of 6–2 in "EPA v. EME Homer City Generation, L.P." (2014). Kavanaugh dissented from the denial of rehearing "en banc" of a unanimous panel opinion upholding the agency's regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and the Supreme Court reversed by a vote of 5–4 in "Utility Air Regulatory Group v. Environmental Protection Agency" (2014). After Kavanaugh dissented from a "per curiam" decision allowing the agency to disregard cost–benefit analysis, the Supreme Court reversed by a vote of 5–4 in "Michigan v. EPA" (2015).


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In "Doe v. Exxon Mobil Corp." (2007), Kavanaugh dissented when the circuit court allowed a lawsuit making accusations of ExxonMobil human rights violations in Indonesia to proceed, arguing that the claims were not justiciable. He dissented again when the circuit court later found that the corporation could be sued under the Alien Tort Statute of 1789.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Kavanaugh wrote for unanimous three-judge district courts when they held that the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act could restrict soft money donations to political parties and forbid campaign contributions by foreign citizens. The Supreme Court summarily affirmed both those judgments on direct appeal.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In 2014, Kavanaugh concurred in the judgment when the "en banc" D.C. Circuit found that the Free Speech Clause did not forbid the government from requiring meatpackers to include a country of origin label on their products. In "United States Telecom Ass'n v. FCC" (2016), he dissented when the "en banc" circuit refused to rehear a rejected challenge to the net neutrality rule, writing, "Congress did not clearly authorize the FCC to issue the net neutrality rule."


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In November 2010, Kavanaugh dissented from the denial of rehearing "en banc" after the circuit found that attaching a Global Positioning System tracking device to a vehicle violated the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court then affirmed the circuit's judgment in "United States v. Jones" (2012). In February 2016, Kavanaugh dissented when the "en banc" circuit refused to rehear police officers' rejected claims of qualified immunity for arresting partygoers in a vacant house. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the circuit's judgment in "District of Columbia v. Wesby" (2018).


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In "Klayman v. Obama" (2015), Kavanaugh concurred when the circuit court denied an "en banc" rehearing of its decision to vacate a district court order blocking the National Security Agency's warrantless bulk collection of telephony metadata, writing that the metadata collection was not a search, and even if it were, no reasonable suspicion would be required because of the government's special need to prevent terrorist attacks.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In April 2009, Kavanaugh wrote a long concurrence when the court found that detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp had no right to advance notice before being transferred to another country. In "Kiyemba v. Obama" (2010), the Supreme Court vacated that judgment while refusing to review the matter. In June 2010, Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence in judgment when the "en banc" D.C. Circuit found that the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory owners could not bring a defamation suit regarding the government's allegations that they were terrorists. In October 2012, he wrote for a unanimous court when it found that the Constitution's Ex Post Facto Clause made it unlawful for the government to prosecute Salim Hamdan under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 on charges of providing material support for terrorism.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In August 2010, Kavanaugh wrote a lengthy concurrence when the "en banc" circuit refused to rehear Ghaleb Nassar Al Bihani's rejected claims that the international law of war limits the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists. In 2014, he concurred in the judgment when the "en banc" circuit found that Ali al-Bahlul could be retroactively convicted of war crimes, provided the existing statute already made it a crime "because it does not alter the definition of the crime, the defenses or the punishment". In October 2016, Kavanaugh wrote the plurality opinion when the "en banc" circuit found al-Bahlul could be convicted by a military commission even if his offenses are not internationally recognized as war crimes.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In "Meshal v. Higgenbotham" (2016), Kavanaugh concurred when the divided panel threw out a claim by an American that he had been disappeared by the FBI in a Kenyan black site.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In October 2011, Kavanaugh dissented when the circuit court found that a ban on the sale of semi-automatic rifles was permissible under the Second Amendment. This case followed the landmark Supreme Court ruling "District of Columbia v. Heller" (2008).


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In March 2012, Kavanaugh wrote the opinion in "Coalition for Mercury-Free Drugs v. Sebelius", holding that opponents of thimerosal-preserved vaccines lacked standing to challenge determinations by the Food and Drug Administration that vaccines and their components are safe and effective. SCOTUSblog provided the case as an example of the fact that "[e]ven when Kavanaugh rejects a claim, he sometimes uses his discussion of standing to show that he has heard the plaintiff's argument and taken it seriously". Bloomberg wrote, "Kavanaugh's opinion for the court repeatedly went out of its way to show it respected the Coalition for Mercury-Free Drugs's (CoMeD) 'genuine concern' regarding thimerosal", but nevertheless "said the coalition was required to seek a ban through the executive or legislative branches".


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Twenty-five of Kavanaugh's 48 law clerks have been women, and 13 people of color. Some have been children of other judges and high-profile legal figures, including Clayton Kozinski (son of former federal Judge Alex Kozinski), Porter Wilkinson (daughter of Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III), Philip Alito (son of Justice Samuel Alito), Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld (daughter of Yale Law professors Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld), and Emily Chertoff (daughter of former DHS secretary Michael Chertoff).


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: On September 20, 2018, "The Guardian" reported that two Yale professors had advised female law students at Yale that their physical appearance and femininity could play a role in securing a clerkship with Kavanaugh. Rubenfeld said that Kavanaugh "hires women with a certain look" but did not say what that "look" was. Unnamed sources reported that Chua said that female applicants should exude "model-like" femininity and "dress outgoing" in job interviews with Kavanaugh. Responding to the report, Chua denied that Kavanaugh's hiring decisions were affected by female applicants' attractiveness, saying, "Judge Kavanaugh's first and only litmus test in hiring has been excellence." Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken announced an investigation of the matter, but Yale did not find any cause for sanction. Chua returned to regular teaching in 2019.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: On July 2, 2018, Kavanaugh was one of four U.S. Court of Appeals judges to receive a personal 45-minute interview by President Donald Trump as a potential replacement for Justice Anthony Kennedy. On July 9, Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. In his first public speech after the nomination, Kavanaugh said, "No president has ever consulted more widely or talked with more people from more backgrounds to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination."


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: A statistical analysis by "The Washington Post" estimated that Kavanaugh was more conservative than Neil Gorsuch and less conservative than Samuel Alito. Jonathan Turley of George Washington University wrote that among the judges Trump considered, "Kavanaugh has the most robust view of presidential powers and immunities". Brian Bennett, writing for "Time" magazine, cited Kavanaugh's 2009 "Minnesota Law Review" article defending the president's immunity from prosecution while in office. In a 2017 speech at the American Enterprise Institute about former chief justice William Rehnquist, Kavanaugh praised Rehnquist's dissents in "Roe v. Wade", which ruled abortion bans unconstitutional, and "Furman v. Georgia", which ruled all existing death penalty statutes unconstitutional. Two law professors evaluated Kavanaugh's appellate court decisions for the "Washington Post," rating his decisions in four areas: rights of criminal defendants; support for rules regarding stricter enforcement of environmental protection; upholding the rights of labor unions; and siding with those bringing suits alleging discrimination. They found he had the most conservative voting record on the D.C. Circuit in three of those policy areas, and the second-most in the fourth, between 2003 and 2018.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: During his hearing, Kavanaugh said that he had often said the four greatest moments in Supreme Court history were "Brown v. Board of Education", "Marbury v. Madison", "Youngstown Steel", and "United States v. Nixon", with "Brown" the single greatest.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: According to the Judicial Common Space scores, a score based on the ideology scores of the home state senators and the president who nominated the judge to the federal bench, Clarence Thomas was the only justice more conservative than Kavanaugh. By this metric, Kavanaugh's confirmation shifted the court to the right. Had Barack Obama's nominee Merrick Garland been confirmed in 2016, Stephen Breyer would have become the median swing vote when Kennedy retired. However, since Antonin Scalia was replaced by another conservative (Gorsuch), it was expected that Chief Justice John Roberts would become the median swing vote on the Supreme Court upon Kavanaugh's confirmation.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: The Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled three or four days of public hearings on Kavanaugh's nomination, commencing on September 4, 2018. The hearings were delayed at the onset by objections from the Democratic members about the absence of records of Kavanaugh's time in the George W. Bush administration. The Democrats also complained that 42,000 pages of documents had been received only the night before the first day of hearings. Republicans asserted that the volume of documents available on Kavanaugh equaled that of the previous five nominees to the court; the Democrats responded that only 15% of the documents they had requested about Kavanaugh had been provided. Numerous motions by the Democrats to adjourn or suspend the hearings were ruled out of order by Chairman Chuck Grassley, who argued that Kavanaugh had written over 300 legal opinions available for review. The first day's session closed after statements from each senator and the nominee, with question-and-answer periods to begin the next day.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: During the first round of questions from senators on September 5, 2018, Kavanaugh held to his earlier stated position that he would not express an opinion on matters that might come before the Court. He thus refused to promise to recuse himself from any case, including any that might involve Trump. He also declined to comment on coverage of preexisting healthcare conditions, semiautomatic rifle possession, "Roe v. Wade", or the president's power to self-pardon. He expounded at length on various Constitutional amendments, stare decisis (the role of legal precedent in shaping subsequent judicial rulings), and the president's power to dismiss federal employees. As in the previous session, there were frequent outbursts of protest in the audience, requiring security intervention and removal, as well as repeated procedural objections by Democrats.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: The committee's third day of hearings began with a furor over the release of emails by Kavanaugh related to concern about potential racial profiling in security screenings. The day continued with Kavanaugh's attempts to articulate his jurisprudence, including refusing to answer direct questions about matters he called hypothetical. Senator Chris Coons had tendered Kavanaugh written questions about any knowledge of inappropriate behavior on the part of judge Alex Kozinski, for whom Kavanaugh had clerked, including his circulations of sexually explicit emails via his "Easy Rider Gag List". According to "The Intercept", though Coons had asked him to review his emails from Kozinski, Kavanaugh replied, "I do not remember". During his testimony, Kavanaugh said that Kozinski's 2017 exposure as an alleged prolific sexual harasser was a surprising "gut punch". "The Guardian" reported that their sources disputed Kavanaugh's account because Kozinski's alleged behavior was reportedly widely known among those in the judicial system and its exposure culminated in his abrupt resignation from the bench.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: The committee released a 2003 email in which Kavanaugh said, "I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to ["Roe v. Wade"] 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." Kavanaugh stressed that he was commenting on the views of legal scholars at the time, not his own views, and noted that the case had been reaffirmed on a number of occasions since 2003. Senator Susan Collins indicated that Kavanaugh's statement did not contradict his personal assurance to her that "Roe" is settled law. Kavanaugh noted that "Planned Parenthood v. Casey" (1992), which reaffirmed "Roe v. Wade", was "precedent on precedent". According to Kavanaugh, "Casey" is a key decision about when the Court's precedent may be overturned.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: On September 27, the committee held an additional day of public hearings to discuss allegations that Kavanaugh engaged in sexual misconduct while in high school. The only witnesses were Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, his accuser. Republican members of the committee did not question Ford directly; questioning on their behalf was done by Rachel Mitchell, a career prosecutor from Maricopa County, Arizona. Grassley cut her questioning short, after which the Republican members of the committee questioned him themselves. Alternating with their questions, Democratic members of the committee questioned Ford and Kavanaugh. Ford repeated and expanded upon her earlier allegations, saying that Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge, both "visibly drunk", had locked her into a bedroom, where Kavanaugh groped her and tried to take off her clothes while Judge watched. She said she "believed he was going to rape me" and feared for her life when he held his hand over her mouth. In his opening statement, Kavanaugh claimed the accusations were a "political hit" by left-wing activists and Democrats, saying he faced retaliation "on behalf of the Clintons" for his work on the Starr Report against Bill Clinton. Leland Keyser, Ford's friend who Ford said was present during the alleged attack, has denied that it took place, and questioned certain aspects of the story. Keyser also stated she felt pressured by people to support Ford's story, something she told the FBI about. In response to his testimony, more than 2,400 law professors signed a letter saying that the Senate should not confirm him because "he did not display the impartiality and judicial temperament requisite to sit on the highest court of our land."


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In early July 2018, Kavanaugh's name was on a shortlist of nominees for the Supreme Court. Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University, contacted a "Washington Post" tipline and her U.S. Representative, Anna Eshoo, with accusations that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when they were in high school. On July 30, 2018, Ford wrote to Senator Dianne Feinstein to inform her of her accusation against Kavanaugh, requesting that it be kept confidential. After a September 12 report in "The Intercept", Feinstein confirmed that a complaint had been made against Kavanaugh by a woman who had requested not to be identified. Feinstein said that the woman had claimed that, when they were both in high school, Kavanaugh had tried to force himself on her while she was being physically restrained. The same day, Feinstein said she had forwarded the woman's accusation to federal authorities.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: On September 16, Ford publicized her allegations and claimed Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when she was 15 and he was 17. She said that in the early 1980s, Kavanaugh and Mark Judge, one of Kavanaugh's friends from Georgetown Prep, corralled her in a bedroom at a house party in Maryland and turned up the music playing in the room. According to Ford, Kavanaugh pinned her to the bed, groped her, ground against her, tried to pull off her clothes, and covered her mouth with his hand when she tried to scream. Ford said she was afraid that Kavanaugh might inadvertently kill her during the attack, and believed he was going to rape her. Ford stated that she escaped when Judge jumped on the bed, knocking them all to the floor.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Kavanaugh issued the following statement through the White House: "I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time." Republicans criticized the decision to withhold "a vague, anonymous accusation for months" before releasing it on the "eve of [Kavanaugh's] confirmation" as an attempt to delay his confirmation hearings. Kavanaugh released a statement on the evening before his and Ford's scheduled testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said that due to the serious nature of the allegations, both he and Ford deserved to be heard. He also stated, "I am innocent of this charge."


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: On September 19, the Senate Judiciary Committee invited Kavanaugh and Ford to testify about the allegation. Kavanaugh agreed to testify on September 19. Ford requested that the FBI investigate the matter first, but Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley declined the request, and gave Ford a deadline of September 21 to inform the committee whether she intended to testify. He added that Ford was welcome to appear before the committee privately or publicly. On September 20, Ford's attorney opened negotiations with the committee to reschedule the hearing under "terms that are fair and which ensure her safety". A bipartisan Judiciary Committee panel and Ford's representatives agreed to a hearing after September 24.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Ford stated that Leland Ingham Keyser, a lifelong friend, was present at the party where the alleged assault took place. On September 22, Keyser stated through her attorney that she did not know Kavanaugh and had no memory of the party or a sexual assault. The attorney did confirm that Keyser was a friend of Ford's, and Keyser told "The Washington Post" that she believed Ford's allegation.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: On October 4, 2018, the White House announced that it had found no corroboration of Ford's allegation after reviewing the FBI's latest probe into Kavanaugh's past. Her attorneys tweeted, "Those directing the FBI investigation were not interested in seeking the truth."


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In September 2019, "New York Times" reporters Kate Kelly and Robin Pogrebin published "The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation". They reported that Keyser "thought the whole setup Ford described ... sounded wrong", and that she "challenged Ford's accuracy", quoting Keyser as saying, "I don't have any confidence in the story". According to "The Washington Post", the book revealed that "Keyser also said she spoke with many people who 'wanted me to remember something different'—suggesting that there was pressure on her to toe the line [against Kavanaugh]".


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: On September 23, 2018, Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer of "The New Yorker" published an article with another sexual assault allegation against Kavanaugh. Deborah Ramirez, who attended Yale University with Kavanaugh, alleged he exposed himself to her and thrust his penis against her face after they had both been drinking at a college party during the 1983–84 academic year. Kavanaugh said, "This alleged event from 35 years ago did not happen." "The New Yorker" spoke to four classmates, three identified as eyewitnesses but all denied witnessing the event. "The New York Times" interviewed several dozen of Ramirez's classmates in an attempt to corroborate her story, and could find no firsthand witnesses to the alleged assault, but several classmates recalled that they had heard about it in the subsequent days and believed Ramirez. According to "The New York Times", "Ramirez herself told the press and friends that, initially, she was not absolutely certain it was Kavanaugh who assaulted her, but after corresponding with friends who had secondhand knowledge of the incident, and taking time to refresh her recollection, stated that she was certain Kavanaugh was her assailant." "The Washington Post" analyzed Ramirez's allegation and concluded, "Ramirez's accusation has the dual distinction of having more potential corroboration and less actual corroboration than Ford's".


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Michael Avenatti, the lawyer representing Stormy Daniels in her suit against Trump, tweeted on September 23, 2018, that he represented a woman who had "credible information" about Kavanaugh and Judge. Avenatti said his client would be willing to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. On September 26, Avenatti revealed the woman to be Julie Swetnick, a former government employee. In a sworn statement, Swetnick described attending "well over ten house parties in the Washington, D.C. area during the years 1981–1983 where Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present". She described being aware of "efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh and others to 'spike' the 'punch' at house parties I attended with drugs and/or grain alcohol so as to cause girls to lose their inhibitions and their ability to say 'No'". In an interview with NBC News, Swetnick clarified that she didn't actually witness Kavanaugh or Judge spike any drinks. Kavanaugh called her allegations "ridiculous" and Avenatti's allegation as a whole a "farce". "The Wall Street Journal" reported that it had contacted "dozens" of her former classmates and colleagues but failed to reach anyone with knowledge of her allegations and that none of her friends had come forward publicly to support her claims. Grassley referred both Swetnick and Avenatti to the Justice Department for criminal investigation regarding claims that the two engaged in "conspiracy, false statements and obstruction of Congress". Avenatti was later convicted of tax evasion, extortion, fraud, embezzlement, wire fraud, and obstruction of the Internal Revenue Service in multiple trials unrelated to the Kavanaugh allegation.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: On September 19, Judy Munro-Leighton accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault in an anonymous letter signed "Jane Doe", which was addressed to Grassley but mailed to Senator Kamala Harris. On September 26, the Senate committee interrogated Kavanaugh about this accusation. Kavanaugh called the accusation "ridiculous". On November 1, Munro-Leighton talked to committee staff members. During the conversation she changed her story, denying that she had penned the anonymous letter and saying she had contacted Congress as "a ploy" to "get attention". On November 2, Grassley announced Munro-Leighton's identity, and described her accusations as fabricated. She was referred to the Department of Justice and FBI for making false accusations and obstructing justice.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: At the conclusion of the hearing, the Republican leadership of the committee indicated that they planned to hold a committee vote on the nomination the next day, September 28, with a procedural vote on the Senate floor on September 29. On September 28, the committee voted along party lines to advance the nomination to the full Senate; Senator Jeff Flake's vote in support was conditioned on delaying the vote in the full Senate for a week to allow the FBI to investigate Ford's claims. Later, Senators Joe Manchin and Lisa Murkowski also said they would not vote to confirm without an FBI investigation. On this request from the Judiciary Committee, Trump ordered a "supplemental investigation to update Judge Kavanaugh's file", to be limited in scope and completed within a week. The report was transmitted to the White House on October 3 and from there to the Senate on October 4, where senators were permitted to review the report one at a time in secrecy. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate would vote on the confirmation on October 6. Democrats called the FBI investigation incomplete, a "farce", a "sham" and "a horrific cover-up" that omitted key witnesses at the White House's direction. According to "The Washington Post", the White House stopped the FBI from investigating possible falsehoods in Kavanaugh's testimony to Congress about his drinking habits during his youth.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Eighty-three ethics complaints were brought against Kavanaugh regarding his conduct during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Chief Justice Roberts appointed a special federal panel of judges to investigate them. In December 2018, the panel dismissed all the complaints, calling them "serious" but deciding that lower court judges have no authority to investigate Supreme Court justices.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: On October 5, the Senate voted 51–49 to invoke cloture, advancing the nomination to a final floor vote expected on October 6. This was enabled through the application of the so-called "nuclear option", or a simple majority vote, rather than the historical three-fifths supermajority in place before April 2017. The vote was along party lines, with the exception of Democrat Joe Manchin voting yes and Republican Lisa Murkowski voting no.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: On October 6, the Senate confirmed Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court by a 50–48 vote. One senator, Republican Steve Daines, who supported the nomination, was absent during the vote due to his attendance at his daughter's wedding that day, and Murkowski voted "present" despite her opposition so that their votes would cancel out and the balance of the vote would be retained—a rarely used traditional courtesy known as a "pair between senators". All Republicans except Daines and Murkowski voted to confirm Kavanaugh, and all Democrats except Joe Manchin voted not to. Kavanaugh's confirmation vote was historically close. The only Supreme Court confirmation that was closer was the vote on Stanley Matthews, nominated by President James A. Garfield in 1881. Matthews was confirmed by a single vote, 24–23; no other justice has been confirmed by a single vote. In "percentage" terms, Kavanaugh's vote was even closer than Matthews's. Matthews received 51.06% of the vote to Kavanaugh's 51.02%.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Kavanaugh was sworn in as the 114th justice of the Supreme Court on the evening of October 6, 2018. The Constitutional Oath was administered by Chief Justice Roberts and the Judicial Oath was administered by Kennedy, whom Kavanaugh succeeded on the Court. This private ceremony was followed by a public ceremony at the White House on October 8. Upon joining the Court, Kavanaugh became the first Supreme Court justice to hire an all-female team of law clerks.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Kavanaugh began his tenure as Supreme Court justice on October 9, 2018, hearing arguments for "Stokeling v. United States" and "United States v. Stitt".


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In November 2020, Kavanaugh was reassigned to both the Sixth Circuit and the Eighth Circuit. He had previously been assigned to the Seventh Circuit, which covers federal courts in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Circuit justices are principally responsible for responding to emergency requests (for example, applications for emergency stays of executions) that arise from the circuit's jurisdiction, either by the assigned justice alone or else by the justice's referring them to the full Court for review.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Kavanaugh wrote his first Supreme Court opinion on January 8, 2019, in "Henry Schein, Inc. v. Archer & White Sales, Inc.", a unanimous decision reversing an appeals court opinion that had allowed a court to decide whether an issue in a contract between a dental equipment manufacturer and distributor should be decided by arbitration.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: On February 27, Kavanaugh joined Roberts and the court's liberal justices in "Garza v. Idaho", a case in which the Court held that the Sixth Amendment's presumption of prejudice resulting from ineffective assistance of counsel applies to situations in which an attorney declines to file an appeal because an appeal waiver was signed as part of a plea agreement.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In December 2018, as a swing vote, Kavanaugh joined Roberts and the Court's four more liberal justices to decline to hear cases brought by Louisiana and Kansas, which sought to block women from choosing to receive Medicaid-funded medical care from Planned Parenthood clinics. Two lower appeals courts had ruled that the federal law creating Medicaid protects patients' rights to choose any provider which is "qualified to perform" the needed services.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In February 2019, Kavanaugh joined three of his conservative colleagues in voting to reject a stay of a Louisiana law to restrict abortion. He issued his own dissenting opinion. "CNBC" reported that "Kavanaugh agreed [with three conservative justices], but wrote separately that he would be open to reconsidering the legality of the law if the dire warnings from abortion rights groups materialized." The Supreme Court decided this case, "June Medical Services L. L. C. v. Russo", on June 29, 2020, striking down Louisiana's requirement for abortion providers to hold hospital admitting privileges. Kavanaugh dissented. In September 2021, by a 5–4 vote, the Court declined an emergency petition to temporarily block enforcement of the Texas Heartbeat Act, which bans nearly all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Kavanaugh was in the majority, joined by Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett. In June 2022, in "Dobbs v. Jackson", Kavanaugh joined Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Barrett in voting to completely overturn "Roe v. Wade" and "Planned Parenthood v. Casey".


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Also in February, Kavanaugh was part of the majority in decisions relating to the death penalty. On February 7, 2019, he was part of the majority in a 5–4 decision rejecting a Muslim prisoner's request to delay his execution in order to have an imam present. On February 19, 2019, Kavanaugh joined Roberts and the Court's four liberal justices in a 6–3 decision blocking the execution of a man with an "intellectual disability" in Texas. In January 2022, he voted with the majority in a 5–4 decision to allow an execution to proceed in Alabama.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: On June 15, 2020, in "Bostock v. Clayton County", the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that the workplace nondiscrimination protections in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should be interpreted as protecting people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Kavanaugh wrote a dissent in which he argued that sexual orientation discrimination has always been understood as distinct from sex discrimination. He conceded that sexual orientation discrimination "may, as a very literal matter, entail making a distinction based on sex"; nonetheless, he said, "to fire one employee because she is a woman and another employee because he is gay implicates two distinct societal concerns, reveals two distinct biases, imposes two distinct harms, and falls within two distinct statutory prohibitions." He said that any change to the relevant law ought to be made by Congress, not by judges; and that "both the rule of law and democratic accountability badly suffer when a court adopts a hidden or obscure interpretation of the law, and not its ordinary meaning." Kavanaugh's dissent did not discuss gender identity or use the word "transgender", although transgender rights were at issue in the case. In a footnote, he wrote that his analysis "on the basis of sexual orientation would apply in much the same way to discrimination on the basis of gender identity." In October 2020, Kavanaugh agreed with the justices in an "apparently unanimous" decision to deny an appeal brought by Kim Davis, a county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In 2021, Kavanaugh joined a unanimous decision, ruling in favor of a Catholic adoption and social service agency that had been denied funding by the City of Philadelphia because it does not place children for adoption with same-sex couples; the ruling also declined to overturn "Employment Division v. Smith", "an important precedent limiting First Amendment protections for religious practices". The same month, Kavanaugh was among the six justices who rejected the appeal of a Washington State florist, whom lower courts had ruled violated non-discrimination laws by refusing to sell floral arrangements to a same-sex couple based on her religious beliefs against same-sex marriage, leaving the lower courts' judgments in place. In November 2021, Kavanaugh voted with the majority of justices in a 6–3 decision to decline to hear an appeal from Mercy San Juan Medical Center, a hospital affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, which had sought to deny a hysterectomy to a transgender patient on religious grounds. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissented; because four votes are required to hear an appeal, the vote to reject the appeal left in place a lower court ruling in the patient's favor.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In July 2020, in "Trump v. Vance", the Supreme Court ruled in two 7–2 decisions that the Manhattan District Attorney could access Trump's tax records, but that the issue of whether Congress could access the same records needed to be processed through the lower courts. Kavanaugh joined Roberts, Gorsuch, and the court's four Democratic appointees in the majority; Justices Thomas and Alito dissented. The rulings mean that the Manhattan DA will have access to the records while Congress does not, pending the outcome of the case in lower courts.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Eight days before the 2020 presidential election Kavanaugh concurred that absentee votes properly cast in Wisconsin but received after November 3 must be discarded, joining the Court's conservatives in a ruling that requires deferral to state officials on elections. On October 19, Kavanaugh voted to grant a request for a stay that would have prevented ballots sent before Election Day but delivered within three days after it from being counted. The Court was split 4–4, so the ruling by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania requiring all votes to be counted stood, but the case may be reheard. Kavanaugh sided with Roberts and three liberal justices in a 5-3 majority to allow voting extension in North Carolina.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In his concurrence in "National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston" in June 2021, in which the Court ruled unanimously that college sports were not exempt from antitrust law, Kavanaugh called the NCAA "a massive money-raising enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not fairly compensated." No one else, he said, could "not ... pay workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate." He said there were "serious questions" about other rules on compensation.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In the early morning of June 8, 2022, Nicholas John Roske traveled from California to Kavanaugh's home in Maryland with plans to break into the home, murder Kavanaugh, and commit suicide. After seeing two U.S. Marshals outside Kavanaugh's home, Roske turned himself in by calling 9-1-1. He said his attempt to murder Kavanaugh stemmed from dissatisfaction with the Supreme Court's leaked draft opinion in "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization", as well as the potential for the Court to loosen gun control laws under the Second Amendment. Roske was armed with a pistol, two magazines and ammunition, pepper spray, zip ties, a hammer, a screwdriver, a nail punch, a crowbar, a pistol light, duct tape, and other items. He has been charged with attempted murder.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Kavanaugh taught full-term courses on separation of powers at Harvard Law School from 2008 to 2015, on the Supreme Court at Harvard Law School between 2014 and 2018, on National Security and Foreign Relations Law at Yale Law School in 2011, and on Constitutional Interpretation at Georgetown University Law Center in 2007. He was named the Samuel Williston Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School in 2009. In 2008, Kavanaugh was hired as a visiting professor by Elena Kagan, then the dean of Harvard Law School. According to "The Boston Globe", he was generous with his time and accessible, and quickly became a student favorite. He often dined in Cambridge with students and offered references and career advice. Kavanaugh received high evaluations from his students, including J. D. Vance. After the allegations of sexual misconduct against him, Harvard Law School graduates petitioned Harvard to rescind Kavanaugh's position as a lecturer. Shortly thereafter, Kavanaugh voluntarily withdrew from teaching at Harvard for the 2019 winter semester. In the summer of 2019, he joined the faculty of George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School as a visiting professor, co-teaching a summer course in Runnymede, England, on the origins and creation of the United States Constitution.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In 2009, Kavanaugh wrote an article for the "Minnesota Law Review" in which he argued that Congress should exempt U.S. presidents from civil lawsuits while in office because, among other things, such lawsuits could be "time-consuming and distracting" for the president and would thus "ill serve the public interest, especially in times of financial or national security crisis". Kavanaugh argued that if a president "does something dastardly", they may be impeached by the House of Representatives, convicted by the Senate, and criminally prosecuted after leaving office. He asserted that the U.S. would have been better off if President Clinton could have "focused on Osama bin Laden without being distracted by the Paula Jones sexual harassment case and its criminal investigation offshoots". This article garnered attention in 2018 when Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court by Trump, whose 2016 presidential campaign was at the time the subject of a federal probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: When reviewing a book on statutory interpretation by Second Circuit Chief Judge Robert Katzmann, Kavanaugh observed that judges often cannot agree on a statute if its text is ambiguous. To remedy this, he encouraged judges to first seek the "best reading" of the statute, through "interpreting the words of the statute" as well as the context of the statute as a whole, and only then apply other interpretive techniques that may justify an interpretation that differs from the "best meaning", such as constitutional avoidance, legislative history, and Chevron deference.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Kavanaugh and Ashley Estes, the personal secretary to former President George W. Bush, married in 2004; the couple have two daughters. They live in Chevy Chase Section Five, Maryland.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Kavanaugh ran the Boston Marathon in 2010 and 2015. His bibs bore non-qualifying numbers, assigned for a charity or a "guest" rather than an age-based time qualifier. He also has completed many shorter races, from 5 km to 10 miles.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: Kavanaugh is a Roman Catholic and serves as a regular lector at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament at Hanceville, Alabama. He has helped serve meals to the homeless as part of church programs, and has tutored at the Washington Jesuit Academy, a Catholic private school in the District of Columbia.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: At his May 2006 confirmation hearing to the District of Columbia Circuit, he stated that he was a registered Republican. In 2018, Kavanaugh's reported salary was $220,600 as a federal judge and $27,000 as a lecturer at Harvard Law School.


title: Brett Kavanaugh

text: In 2022, Kavanaugh's home was the site of protests following the leak of a draft majority opinion for the Supreme Court case "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization."


title: Oona Chaplin

text: Oona Castilla Chaplin (; born 4 June 1986) is a Spanish-Swiss actress. Her roles include Talisa Maegyr in the HBO TV series "Game of Thrones", Kitty Trevelyan in the BBC drama "The Crimson Field", and Zilpha Geary in the series "Taboo".


title: Oona Chaplin

text: A member of the Chaplin family, she is the daughter of actress Geraldine Chaplin, granddaughter of English filmmaker and actor Charlie Chaplin, and great-granddaughter of Irish-American playwright Eugene O'Neill. She was named after her maternal grandmother Oona O'Neill, Charlie Chaplin’s fourth and final wife.


title: Oona Chaplin

text: Chaplin was born in Madrid to English-American actress Geraldine Chaplin and Chilean cinematographer Patricio Castilla. Her paternal grandmother is Mapuche. She has a half-brother named Shane from her mother's previous relationship with film director Carlos Saura.


title: Oona Chaplin

text: Chaplin spent her childhood mostly in Spain, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Cuba, but travelled often because of her mother's film career. She started dancing ballet, salsa and flamenco at an early age.


title: Oona Chaplin

text: When Chaplin was 15, she began studying at Gordonstoun School in Scotland on a drama scholarship. She appeared in several school plays; toured the United Kingdom in an adaptation of "Romeo and Juliet; and" impersonated her grandfather in the role of Bottom in an adaptation of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. After leaving Gordonstoun, she was accepted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where she graduated in 2007.


title: Oona Chaplin

text: Since graduating from RADA, Chaplin has acted in mainly British and Spanish short and feature films. She has played alongside her mother in the feature films "Inconceivable", "¿Para qué sirve un oso?", "Imago Mortis" and "Anchor and Hope". She has also had supporting roles in British and American television. She appeared as a Brazilian cage dancer in ITV's "Married Single Other" (2010); as Marnie Madden, the wife of main character Hector Madden, in the BBC period drama "The Hour" (2011–2012); as John Watson's girlfriend in an episode of BBC's "Sherlock" (2012); and as Talisa Maegyr in HBO's "Game of Thrones" (2012–2013).


title: Oona Chaplin

text: She plays Kitty Trevelyan, a lead character, in the BBC drama "The Crimson Field" (2014), and Ira Levinson's wife Ruth Levinson in "The Longest Ride" (2015).


title: Oona Chaplin

text: She stars as Zilpha Geary in the eight-part historical fiction series "Taboo" (2017) on BBC One and FX.


title: Oona Chaplin

text: Chaplin joined the cast of James Cameron's "Avatar" sequels in June 2017. Her character, Varang, is described as "a strong and vibrant central character who spans the entire saga of the sequels".


title: Chocolate

text: Chocolate is a food made from roasted and ground cacao seed kernels that is available as a liquid, solid, or paste, either on its own or as a flavoring agent in other foods. Cacao has been consumed in some form since at least the Olmec civilization (19th-11th century BCE), and the majority of Mesoamerican people ─ including the Maya and Aztecs ─ made chocolate beverages.


title: Chocolate

text: The seeds of the cacao tree have an intense bitter taste and must be fermented to develop the flavor. After fermentation, the seeds are dried, cleaned, and roasted. The shell is removed to produce cocoa nibs, which are then ground to cocoa mass, unadulterated chocolate in rough form. Once the cocoa mass is liquefied by heating, it is called chocolate liquor. The liquor may also be cooled and processed into its two components: cocoa solids and cocoa butter. Baking chocolate, also called bitter chocolate, contains cocoa solids and cocoa butter in varying proportions, without any added sugar. Powdered baking cocoa, which contains more fiber than cocoa butter, can be processed with alkali to produce dutch cocoa. Much of the chocolate consumed today is in the form of sweet chocolate, a combination of cocoa solids, cocoa butter or added vegetable oils, and sugar. Milk chocolate is sweet chocolate that additionally contains milk powder or condensed milk. White chocolate contains cocoa butter, sugar, and milk, but no cocoa solids.


title: Chocolate

text: Chocolate is one of the most popular food types and flavors in the world, and many foodstuffs involving chocolate exist, particularly desserts, including cakes, pudding, mousse, chocolate brownies, and chocolate chip cookies. Many candies are filled with or coated with sweetened chocolate. Chocolate bars, either made of solid chocolate or other ingredients coated in chocolate, are eaten as snacks. Gifts of chocolate molded into different shapes (such as eggs, hearts, coins) are traditional on certain Western holidays, including Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, and Hanukkah. Chocolate is also used in cold and hot beverages, such as chocolate milk and hot chocolate, and in some alcoholic drinks, such as creme de cacao.


title: Chocolate

text: Although cocoa originated in the Americas, West African countries, particularly Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, are the leading producers of cocoa in the 21st century, accounting for some 60% of the world cocoa supply.


title: Chocolate

text: With some two million children involved in the farming of cocoa in West Africa, child slavery and trafficking associated with the cocoa trade remain major concerns. A 2018 report argued that international attempts to improve conditions for children were doomed to failure because of persistent poverty, absence of schools, increasing world cocoa demand, more intensive farming of cocoa, and continued exploitation of child labor.


title: Chocolate

text: Chocolate has been prepared as a drink for nearly all of its history. For example, one vessel found at an Olmec archaeological site on the Gulf Coast of Veracruz, Mexico, dates chocolate's preparation by pre-Olmec peoples as early as 1750 BC. On the Pacific coast of Chiapas, Mexico, a Mokaya archaeological site provides evidence of cocoa beverages dating even earlier to 1900 BC. The residues and the kind of vessel in which they were found indicate the initial use of cocoa was not simply as a beverage, but the white pulp around the cocoa beans was likely used as a source of fermentable sugars for an alcoholic drink.


title: Chocolate

text: An early Classic-period (460–480 AD) Maya tomb from the site in Rio Azul had vessels with the Maya glyph for cocoa on them with residue of a chocolate drink, suggests the Maya were drinking chocolate around 400 AD. Documents in Maya hieroglyphs stated chocolate was used for ceremonial purposes in addition to everyday life. The Maya grew cacao trees in their backyards and used the cocoa seeds the trees produced to make a frothy, bitter drink.


title: Chocolate

text: By the 15th century, the Aztecs had gained control of a large part of Mesoamerica and had adopted cocoa into their culture. They associated chocolate with Quetzalcoatl, who, according to one legend, was cast away by the other gods for sharing chocolate with humans, and identified its extrication from the pod with the removal of the human heart in sacrifice. In contrast to the Maya, who liked their chocolate warm, the Aztecs drank it cold, seasoning it with a broad variety of additives, including the petals of the "Cymbopetalum penduliflorum" tree, chile pepper, allspice, vanilla, and honey.


title: Chocolate

text: The Aztecs were unable to grow cocoa themselves, as their home in the Mexican highlands was unsuitable for it, so chocolate was a luxury imported into the empire. Those who lived in areas ruled by the Aztecs were required to offer cocoa seeds in payment of the tax they deemed "tribute". Cocoa beans were often used as currency. For example, the Aztecs used a system in which one turkey cost 100 cocoa beans and one fresh avocado was worth three beans.


title: Chocolate

text: The Maya and Aztecs associated cocoa with human sacrifice, and chocolate drinks specifically with sacrificial human blood.


title: Chocolate

text: The Spanish royal chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés described a chocolate drink he had seen in Nicaragua in 1528, mixed with achiote: "because those people are fond of drinking human blood, to make this beverage seem like blood, they add a little achiote, so that it then turns red. ... and part of that foam is left on the lips and around the mouth, and when it is red for having achiote, it seems a horrific thing, because it seems like blood itself."


title: Chocolate

text: Until the 16th century, no European had ever heard of the popular drink from the Central American peoples. Christopher Columbus and his son Ferdinand encountered the cocoa bean on Columbus's fourth mission to the Americas on 15 August 1502, when he and his crew stole a large native canoe that proved to contain cocoa beans among other goods for trade. Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés may have been the first European to encounter it, as the frothy drink was part of the after-dinner routine of Montezuma. José de Acosta, a Spanish Jesuit missionary who lived in Peru and then Mexico in the later 16th century, wrote of its growing influence on the Spaniards:


title: Chocolate

text: Although bananas are more profitable, cocoa is more highly esteemed in Mexico. . . Cocoa is a smaller fruit than almonds and thicker, which toasted do not taste bad. It is so prized among the Indians and even among Spaniards. . . because since it is a dried fruit it can be stored for a long time without deterioration, and they brings ships loaded with them from the province of Guatemala. . . It also serves as currency, because with five cocoas you can buy one thing, with thirty another, and with a hundred something else, without there being contradiction; and they give these cocoas as alms to the poor who beg for them. The principal product of this cocoa is a concoction which they make that they call “chocolate,” which is a crazy thing treasured in that land, and those who are not accustomed are disgusted by it, because it has a foam on top and a bubbling like that of feces, which certainly takes a lot to put up with. Anyway, it is the prized beverage which the Indians offer to nobles who come to or pass through their lands; and the Spaniards, especially Spanish women born in those lands die for black chocolate. This aforementioned chocolate is said to be made in various forms and temperaments, hot, cold, and lukewarm. They are wont to use spices and much chili; they also make it into a paste, and it is said that it is a medicine to treat coughs, the stomach, and colds. Whatever may be the case, in fact those who have not been reared on this opinion are not appetized by it.


title: Chocolate

text: While Columbus had taken cocoa beans with him back to Spain, chocolate made no impact until Spanish friars introduced it to the Spanish court. After the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs, chocolate was imported to Europe. There, it quickly became a court favorite. It was still served as a beverage, but the Spanish added sugar, as well as honey (the original sweetener used by the Aztecs for chocolate), to counteract the natural bitterness. Vanilla, another indigenous American introduction, was also a popular additive, with pepper and other spices sometimes used to give the illusion of a more potent vanilla flavor. Unfortunately, these spices tended to unsettle the European constitution; the "Encyclopédie" states, "The pleasant scent and sublime taste it imparts to chocolate have made it highly recommended; but a long experience having shown that it could potentially upset one's stomach", which is why chocolate without vanilla was sometimes referred to as "healthy chocolate". By 1602, chocolate had made its way from Spain to Austria. By 1662, Pope Alexander VII had declared that religious fasts were not broken by consuming chocolate drinks. Within about a hundred years, chocolate established a foothold throughout Europe.


title: Chocolate

text: The new craze for chocolate brought with it a thriving slave market, as between the early 1600s and late 1800s, the laborious and slow processing of the cocoa bean was manual. Cocoa plantations spread, as the English, Dutch, and French colonized and planted. With the depletion of Mesoamerican workers, largely to disease, cocoa production was often the work of poor wage laborers and African slaves. Wind-powered and horse-drawn mills were used to speed production, augmenting human labor. Heating the working areas of the table-mill, an innovation that emerged in France in 1732, also assisted in extraction.


title: Chocolate

text: New processes that sped the production of chocolate emerged early in the Industrial Revolution. In 1815, Dutch chemist Coenraad van Houten introduced alkaline salts to chocolate, which reduced its bitterness. A few years thereafter, in 1828, he created a press to remove about half the natural fat (cocoa butter) from chocolate liquor, which made chocolate both cheaper to produce and more consistent in quality. This innovation introduced the modern era of chocolate.


title: Chocolate

text: Known as "Dutch cocoa", this machine-pressed chocolate was instrumental in the transformation of chocolate to its solid form when, in 1847, English chocolatier Joseph Fry discovered a way to make chocolate moldable when he mixed the ingredients of cocoa powder and sugar with melted cocoa butter. Subsequently, his chocolate factory, Fry's of Bristol, England, began mass-producing chocolate bars, Fry's Chocolate Cream, launched in 1866, and they became very popular. Milk had sometimes been used as an addition to chocolate beverages since the mid-17th century, but in 1875 Swiss chocolatier Daniel Peter invented milk chocolate by mixing a powdered milk developed by Henri Nestlé with the liquor. In 1879, the texture and taste of chocolate was further improved when Rudolphe Lindt invented the conching machine.


title: Chocolate

text: Besides Nestlé, several notable chocolate companies had their start in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rowntree's of York set up and began producing chocolate in 1862, after buying out the Tuke family business. Cadbury was manufacturing boxed chocolates in England by 1868. Manufacturing their first Easter egg in 1875, Cadbury created the modern chocolate Easter egg after developing a pure cocoa butter that could easily be molded into smooth shapes. In 1893, Milton S. Hershey purchased chocolate processing equipment at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and soon began the career of Hershey's chocolates with chocolate-coated caramels.


title: Chocolate

text: The Baker Chocolate Company, which makes Baker's Chocolate, is the oldest producer of chocolate in the United States. In 1765 Dr. James Baker and John Hannon founded the company in Boston. Using cocoa beans from the West Indies, the pair built their chocolate business, which is still in operation.


title: Chocolate

text: White chocolate was first introduced to the U.S. in 1946 by Frederick E. Hebert of Hebert Candies in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, near Boston, after he had tasted "white coat" candies while traveling in Europe.


title: Chocolate

text: Cocoa, pronounced by the Olmecs as "kakawa", dates to 1000 BC or earlier. The word "chocolate" entered the English language from Spanish in about 1600. The word entered Spanish from the word "chocolātl" in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. The origin of the Nahuatl word is uncertain, as it does not appear in any early Nahuatl source, where the word for chocolate drink is "cacahuatl", "cocoa water". It is possible that the Spaniards coined the word (perhaps in order to avoid "caca", a vulgar Spanish word for "faeces") by combining the Yucatec Mayan word "chocol", "hot", with the Nahuatl word "atl", "water". A widely cited proposal is that the derives from unattested "xocolatl" meaning "bitter drink" is unsupported; the change from "x-" to "ch-" is unexplained, as is the "-l-". Another proposed etymology derives it from the word "chicolatl", meaning "beaten drink", which may derive from the word for the frothing stick, "chicoli". Other scholars reject all these proposals, considering the origin of first element of the name to be unknown. The term "chocolatier", for a chocolate confection maker, is attested from 1888.


title: Chocolate

text: Several types of chocolate can be distinguished. Pure, unsweetened chocolate, often called "baking chocolate", contains primarily cocoa solids and cocoa butter in varying proportions. Much of the chocolate consumed today is in the form of sweet chocolate, which combines chocolate with sugar.


title: Chocolate

text: Dark chocolate is produced by adding fat and sugar to the cocoa mixture. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration calls this "sweet chocolate", and requires a 15% concentration of chocolate liquor. European rules specify a minimum of 35% cocoa solids. A higher amount of cocoa solids indicates more bitterness. Semisweet chocolate is dark chocolate with low sugar content. Bittersweet chocolate is chocolate liquor to which some sugar (typically a third), more cocoa butter and vanilla are added. It has less sugar and more liquor than semisweet chocolate, but the two are interchangeable in baking. It is also known to last for two years if stored properly. , there is no high-quality evidence that dark chocolate affects blood pressure significantly or provides other health benefits.


title: Chocolate

text: Milk chocolate is sweet chocolate that also contains milk powder or condensed milk. In the UK and Ireland, milk chocolate must contain a minimum of 20% total dry cocoa solids; in the rest of the European Union, the minimum is 25%.


title: Chocolate

text: White chocolate, although similar in texture to that of milk and dark chocolate, does not contain any cocoa solids that impart a dark color. In 2002, the US Food and Drug Administration established a standard for white chocolate as the "common or usual name of products made from cocoa fat (i.e., cocoa butter), milk solids, nutritive carbohydrate sweeteners, and other safe and suitable ingredients, but containing no nonfat cocoa solids".


title: Chocolate

text: Baking chocolate, or cooking chocolate, is chocolate intended to be used for baking and in sweet foods that may or may not be sweetened. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate, are produced and marketed as baking chocolate. However, lower quality baking chocolate may not be as flavorful compared to higher-quality chocolate, and may have a different mouthfeel.


title: Chocolate

text: Poorly tempered or untempered chocolate may have whitish spots on the dark chocolate part, called chocolate bloom; it is an indication that sugar or fat has separated due to poor storage. It is not toxic and can be safely consumed.


title: Chocolate

text: Modeling chocolate is a chocolate paste made by melting chocolate and combining it with corn syrup, glucose syrup, or golden syrup.


title: Chocolate

text: Roughly two-thirds of the entire world's cocoa is produced in West Africa, with 43% sourced from Côte d'Ivoire, where, , child labor is a common practice to obtain the product. According to the World Cocoa Foundation, in 2007 some 50 million people around the world depended on cocoa as a source of livelihood. in the UK, most chocolatiers purchase their chocolate from them, to melt, mold and package to their own design. According to the WCF's 2012 report, the Ivory Coast is the largest producer of cocoa in the world. The two main jobs associated with creating chocolate candy are chocolate makers and chocolatiers. Chocolate makers use harvested cocoa beans and other ingredients to produce couverture chocolate (covering). Chocolatiers use the finished couverture to make chocolate candies (bars, truffles, etc.).


title: Chocolate

text: Production costs can be decreased by reducing cocoa solids content or by substituting cocoa butter with another fat. Cocoa growers object to allowing the resulting food to be called "chocolate", due to the risk of lower demand for their crops.


title: Chocolate

text: The sequencing in 2010 of the genome of the cacao tree may allow yields to be improved. Due to concerns about global warming effects on lowland climate in the narrow band of latitudes where cocoa is grown (20 degrees north and south of the equator), the commercial company Mars, Incorporated and the University of California, Berkeley, are conducting genomic research in 2017–18 to improve the survivability of cacao plants in hot climates.


title: Chocolate

text: Chocolate is made from cocoa beans, the dried and fermented seeds of the cacao tree ("Theobroma cacao"), a small, 4–8 m tall (15–26 ft tall) evergreen tree native to the deep tropical region of the Americas. Recent genetic studies suggest the most common genotype of the plant originated in the Amazon basin and was gradually transported by humans throughout South and Central America. Early forms of another genotype have also been found in what is now Venezuela. The scientific name, "Theobroma", means "food of the gods". The fruit, called a cocoa pod, is ovoid, long and wide, ripening yellow to orange, and weighing about when ripe.


title: Chocolate

text: Cacao trees are small, understory trees that need rich, well-drained soils. They naturally grow within 20° of either side of the equator because they need about 2000 mm of rainfall a year, and temperatures in the range of . Cacao trees cannot tolerate a temperature lower than .


title: Chocolate

text: Cocoa pods are harvested by cutting them from the tree using a machete, or by knocking them off the tree using a stick. It is important to harvest the pods when they are fully ripe, because if the pod is unripe, the beans will have a low cocoa butter content, or low sugar content, reducing the ultimate flavor.


title: Chocolate

text: The beans (which are sterile within their pods) and their surrounding pulp are removed from the pods and placed in piles or bins to ferment. Micro-organisms, present naturally in the environment, ferment the pectin-containing material. Yeasts produce ethanol, lactic acid bacteria produce lactic acid, and acetic acid bacteria produce acetic acid. In some cocoa-producing regions an association between filamentous fungi and bacteria (called "cocobiota") acts to produce metabolites beneficial to human health when consumed. The fermentation process, which takes up to seven days, also produces several flavor precursors, that eventually provide the chocolate taste.


title: Chocolate

text: After fermentation, the beans must be dried to prevent mold growth. Climate and weather permitting, this is done by spreading the beans out in the sun from five to seven days. In some growing regions (for example, Tobago), the dried beans are then polished for sale by "dancing the cocoa": spreading the beans onto a floor, adding oil or water, and shuffling the beans against each other using bare feet.


title: Chocolate

text: The dried beans are then transported to a chocolate manufacturing facility. The beans are cleaned (removing twigs, stones, and other debris), roasted, and graded. Next, the shell of each bean is removed to extract the nib. The nibs are ground and liquefied, resulting in pure chocolate liquor. The liquor can be further processed into cocoa solids and cocoa butter.


title: Chocolate

text: The beans are dried without fermentation. The nibs are removed and hydrated in an acidic solution. Then they are heated for 72 hours and dried again. Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry showed that the incubated chocolate had higher levels of Strecker aldehydes, and lower levels of pyrazines.


title: Chocolate

text: Chocolate liquor is blended with the cocoa butter in varying quantities to make different types of chocolate or couverture. The basic blends of ingredients for the various types of chocolate (in order of highest quantity of cocoa liquor first), are:


title: Chocolate

text: Usually, an emulsifying agent, such as soy lecithin, is added, though a few manufacturers prefer to exclude this ingredient for purity reasons and to remain GMO-free, sometimes at the cost of a perfectly smooth texture. Some manufacturers are now using PGPR, an artificial emulsifier derived from castor oil that allows them to reduce the amount of cocoa butter while maintaining the same mouthfeel.


title: Chocolate

text: The texture is also heavily influenced by processing, specifically conching (see below). The more expensive chocolate tends to be processed longer and thus has a smoother texture and mouthfeel, regardless of whether emulsifying agents are added.


title: Chocolate

text: Different manufacturers develop their own "signature" blends based on the above formulas, but varying proportions of the different constituents are used. The finest, plain dark chocolate couverture contains at least 70% cocoa (both solids and butter), whereas milk chocolate usually contains up to 50%. High-quality white chocolate couverture contains only about 35% cocoa butter.


title: Chocolate

text: Producers of high-quality, small-batch chocolate argue that mass production produces bad-quality chocolate. Some mass-produced chocolate contains much less cocoa (as low as 7% in many cases), and fats other than cocoa butter. Vegetable oils and artificial vanilla flavor are often used in cheaper chocolate to mask poorly fermented and/or roasted beans.


title: Chocolate

text: In 2007, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association in the United States, whose members include Hershey, Nestlé, and Archer Daniels Midland, lobbied the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to change the legal definition of chocolate to let them substitute partially hydrogenated vegetable oils for cocoa butter, in addition to using artificial sweeteners and milk substitutes. Currently, the FDA does not allow a product to be referred to as "chocolate" if the product contains any of these ingredients.


title: Chocolate

text: In the EU a product can be sold as chocolate if it contains up to 5% vegetable oil, and must be labeled as "family milk chocolate" rather than "milk chocolate" if it contains 20% milk.


title: Chocolate

text: According to Canadian Food and Drug Regulations, a "chocolate product" is a food product that is sourced from at least one "cocoa product" and contains at least one of the following: "chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, dark chocolate, sweet chocolate, milk chocolate, or white chocolate". A "cocoa product" is defined as a food product that is sourced from cocoa beans and contains "cocoa nibs, cocoa liquor, cocoa mass, unsweetened chocolate, bitter chocolate, chocolate liquor, cocoa, low-fat cocoa, cocoa powder, or low-fat cocoa powder".


title: Chocolate

text: The penultimate process is called conching. A conche is a container filled with metal beads, which act as grinders. The refined and blended chocolate mass is kept in a liquid state by frictional heat. Chocolate before conching has an uneven and gritty texture. The conching process produces cocoa and sugar particles smaller than the tongue can detect (typically around 20 μm) and reduces rough edges, hence the smooth feel in the mouth. The length of the conching process determines the final smoothness and quality of the chocolate. High-quality chocolate is conched for about 72 hours, and lesser grades about four to six hours. After the process is complete, the chocolate mass is stored in tanks heated to about until final processing.


title: Chocolate

text: The final process is called tempering. Uncontrolled crystallization of cocoa butter typically results in crystals of varying size, some or all large enough to be seen with the naked eye. This causes the surface of the chocolate to appear mottled and matte, and causes the chocolate to crumble rather than snap when broken. The uniform sheen and crisp bite of properly processed chocolate are the results of consistently small cocoa butter crystals produced by the tempering process.


title: Chocolate

text: The fats in cocoa butter can crystallize in six different forms (polymorphous crystallization). The primary purpose of tempering is to assure that only the best form is present. The six different crystal forms have different properties.


title: Chocolate

text: As a solid piece of chocolate, the cocoa butter fat particles are in a crystalline rigid structure that gives the chocolate its solid appearance. Once heated, the crystals of the polymorphic cocoa butter can break apart from the rigid structure and allow the chocolate to obtain a more fluid consistency as the temperature increases – the melting process. When the heat is removed, the cocoa butter crystals become rigid again and come closer together, allowing the chocolate to solidify.


title: Chocolate

text: The temperature in which the crystals obtain enough energy to break apart from their rigid conformation would depend on the milk fat content in the chocolate and the shape of the fat molecules, as well as the form of the cocoa butterfat. Chocolate with a higher fat content will melt at a lower temperature.


title: Chocolate

text: Making chocolate considered "good" is about forming as many type V crystals as possible. This provides the best appearance and texture and creates the most stable crystals, so the texture and appearance will not degrade over time. To accomplish this, the temperature is carefully manipulated during the crystallization.


title: Chocolate

text: Generally, the chocolate is first heated to to melt all six forms of crystals. Next, the chocolate is cooled to about , which will allow crystal types IV and V to form. At this temperature, the chocolate is agitated to create many small crystal "seeds" which will serve as nuclei to create small crystals in the chocolate. The chocolate is then heated to about to eliminate any type IV crystals, leaving just type V. After this point, any excessive heating of the chocolate will destroy the temper and this process will have to be repeated. Other methods of chocolate tempering are used as well. The most common variant is introducing already tempered, solid "seed" chocolate. The temper of chocolate can be measured with a chocolate temper meter to ensure accuracy and consistency. A sample cup is filled with the chocolate and placed in the unit which then displays or prints the results.


title: Chocolate

text: Chocolate tempering machines (or temperers) with computer controls can be used for producing consistently tempered chocolate. In particular, continuous tempering machines are used in large volume applications. Various methods and apparatuses for continuous flow tempering. In general, molten chocolate coming in at 40–50 °C is cooled in heat exchangers to crystallization temperates of about 26–30 °C, passed through a tempering column consisting of spinning plates to induce shear, then warmed slightly to re-melt undesirable crystal formations.


title: Chocolate

text: Chocolate is very sensitive to temperature and humidity. Ideal storage temperatures are between , with a relative humidity of less than 50%. If refrigerated or frozen without containment, chocolate can absorb enough moisture to cause a whitish discoloration, the result of fat or sugar crystals rising to the surface. Various types of "blooming" effects can occur if chocolate is stored or served improperly.


title: Chocolate

text: Chocolate bloom is caused by storage temperature fluctuating or exceeding , while sugar bloom is caused by temperature below or excess humidity. To distinguish between different types of bloom, one can rub the surface of the chocolate lightly, and if the bloom disappears, it is fat bloom. Moving chocolate between temperature extremes, can result in an oily texture. Although visually unappealing, chocolate suffering from bloom is safe for consumption and taste unaffected. Bloom can be reversed by retempering the chocolate or using it for any use that requires melting the chocolate.


title: Chocolate

text: Chocolate is generally stored away from other foods, as it can absorb different aromas. Ideally, chocolates are packed or wrapped, and placed in proper storage with the correct humidity and temperature. Additionally, chocolate is frequently stored in a dark place or protected from light by wrapping paper. The glossy shine, snap, aroma, texture, and taste of the chocolate can show the quality and if it was stored well.


title: Chocolate

text: One hundred grams of milk chocolate supplies 540 calories. It is 59% carbohydrates (52% as sugar and 3% as dietary fiber), 30% fat and 8% protein (table). Approximately 65% of the fat in milk chocolate is saturated, mainly palmitic acid and stearic acid, while the predominant unsaturated fat is oleic acid (table).


title: Chocolate

text: 100-grams of milk chocolate is an "excellent source" (over 19% of the Daily Value, DV) of riboflavin, vitamin B12 and the dietary minerals, manganese, phosphorus and zinc. Chocolate is a "good source" (10–19% DV) of calcium, magnesium and iron.


title: Chocolate

text: Chocolate may be a factor for heartburn in some people because one of its constituents, theobromine, may affect the esophageal sphincter muscle in a way that permits stomach acids to enter the esophagus. Theobromine poisoning is an overdosage reaction to the bitter alkaloid, which happens more frequently in domestic animals than humans. However, daily intake of 50–100 g cocoa (0.8–1.5 g theobromine) by humans has been associated with sweating, trembling and severe headache. Chocolate contains alkaloids such as theobromine and phenethylamine, which have physiological effects in humans, but the presence of theobromine renders it toxic to some animals, including dogs and cats.


title: Chocolate

text: According to a 2005 study, the average lead concentration of cocoa beans is ≤ 0.5 ng/g, which is one of the lowest reported values for a natural food. However, during cultivation and production, chocolate may absorb lead from the environment (such as in atmospheric emissions of leaded gasoline, which is still being used in Nigeria). Reports from 2014 indicate that "chocolate might be a significant source" of lead ingestion for children if consumption is high (with dark chocolate containing higher amounts), and "one 10 g cube of dark chocolate may contain as much as 20% of the daily lead oral limit."


title: Chocolate

text: Chocolate and cocoa contain moderate to high amounts of oxalate, which may increase the risk of kidney stones.


title: Chocolate

text: A few studies have documented allergic reactions from chocolate in children. Other research has shown that dark chocolate can aggravate acne in men who are prone to it. Research has also shown that consuming dark chocolate does not substantially affect blood pressure. Chocolate and cocoa are under preliminary research to determine if consumption affects the risk of certain cardiovascular diseases or cognitive abilities.


title: Chocolate

text: One tablespoonful (5 grams) of dry unsweetened cocoa powder has 12.1 mg of caffeine and a 25-g single serving of dark chocolate has 22.4 mg of caffeine. Although a single 7 oz. serving of coffee may contain 80–175 mg, studies have shown psychoactive effects in caffeine doses as low as 9 mg, and a dose as low as 12.5 mg was shown to have effects on cognitive performance.


title: Chocolate

text: No particular compound within chocolate has been associated with any specific health outcome; it is more likely that its observed, overall beneficial effect in humans "may owe something more to the whole than to any given part.". However, the polyphenol epicatechin is regarded as potentially significant. Cocoa solids are a source of flavonoids and alkaloids, such as theobromine, phenethylamine, and caffeine.


title: Chocolate

text: Some manufacturers provide the percentage of chocolate in a finished chocolate confection as a label quoting percentage of "cocoa" or "cacao". This refers to the combined percentage of both cocoa solids and cocoa butter in the bar, not just the percentage of cocoa solids. The Belgian AMBAO certification mark indicates that no non-cocoa vegetable fats have been used in making the chocolate. A long-standing dispute between Britain on the one hand and Belgium and France over British use of vegetable fats in chocolate ended in 2000 with the adoption of new standards which permitted the use of up to five percent vegetable fats in clearly labelled products. This British style of chocolate has sometimes been pejoratively referred to as "vegelate".


title: Chocolate

text: In the United States, some large chocolate manufacturers lobbied the federal government to permit confections containing cheaper hydrogenated vegetable oil in place of cocoa butter to be sold as "chocolate". In June 2007, in response to consumer concern about the proposal, the FDA reiterated "Cacao fat, as one of the signature characteristics of the product, will remain a principal component of standardized chocolate."


title: Chocolate

text: Chocolate, prevalent throughout the world, is a steadily growing, US$50 billion-a-year worldwide business. Europe accounts for 45% of the world's chocolate revenue, and the US spent $20 billion in 2013. Big Chocolate is the grouping of major international chocolate companies in Europe and the U.S. U.S. companies Mars and Hershey's alone generated $13 billion a year in chocolate sales and account for two-thirds of U.S. production in 2004. Despite the expanding reach of the chocolate industry internationally, cocoa farmers and labourers in the Ivory Coast are unaware of the uses of the beans; the high cost of chocolate products in the Ivory Coast make it inaccessible to the majority of the population, who do not know what it tastes like.


title: Chocolate

text: Chocolate manufacturers produce a range of products from chocolate bars to fudge. Large manufacturers of chocolate products include Cadbury (the world's largest confectionery manufacturer), Ferrero, Guylian, The Hershey Company, Lindt & Sprüngli, Mars, Incorporated, Milka, Neuhaus and Suchard.


title: Chocolate

text: Guylian is best known for its chocolate sea shells; Cadbury for its Dairy Milk and Creme Egg. The Hershey Company, the largest chocolate manufacturer in North America, produces the Hershey Bar and Hershey's Kisses. Mars Incorporated, a large privately owned U.S. corporation, produces Mars Bar, Milky Way, M&M's, Twix, and Snickers. Lindt is known for its truffle balls and gold foil-wrapped Easter bunnies.


title: Chocolate

text: Food conglomerates Nestlé SA and Kraft Foods both have chocolate brands. Nestlé acquired Rowntree's in 1988 and now markets chocolates under their brand, including Smarties (a chocolate candy) and Kit Kat (a chocolate bar); Kraft Foods through its 1990 acquisition of Jacobs Suchard, now owns Milka and Suchard. In February 2010, Kraft also acquired British-based Cadbury; Fry's, Trebor Basset and the fair trade brand Green & Black's also belongs to the group.


title: Chocolate

text: The widespread use of children in cocoa production is controversial, not only for the concerns about child labor and exploitation, but also because up to 12,000 of the 200,000 children working in the Ivory Coast, the world's biggest producer of cocoa, may be victims of trafficking or slavery. Most attention on this subject has focused on West Africa, which collectively supplies 69 percent of the world's cocoa, and the Ivory Coast in particular, which supplies 35 percent of the world's cocoa. Thirty percent of children under age 15 in sub-Saharan Africa are child laborers, mostly in agricultural activities including cocoa farming. Major chocolate producers, such as Nestlé, buy cocoa at commodities exchanges where Ivorian cocoa is mixed with other cocoa.


title: Chocolate

text: In 2009, Salvation Army International Development (SAID) UK stated that 12,000 children have been trafficked on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast of Africa, where half of the world's chocolate is made. SAID UK states that it is these child slaves who are likely to be working in "harsh and abusive" conditions for the production of chocolate, and an increasing number of health-food and anti-slavery organisations are highlighting and campaigning against the use of trafficking in the chocolate industry.


title: Chocolate

text: As of 2017, approximately 2.1 million children in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire were involved in farming cocoa, carrying heavy loads, clearing forests, and being exposed to pesticides. According to Sona Ebai, the former secretary-general of the Alliance of Cocoa Producing Countries: "I think child labor cannot be just the responsibility of industry to solve. I think it's the proverbial all-hands-on-deck: government, civil society, the private sector. And there, you need leadership." Reported in 2018, a 3-year pilot program – conducted by Nestlé with 26,000 farmers mostly located in Côte d'Ivoire – observed a 51% decrease in the number of children doing hazardous jobs in cocoa farming. The US Department of Labor formed the Child Labor Cocoa Coordinating Group as a public-private partnership with the governments of Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire to address child labor practices in the cocoa industry. The International Cocoa Initiative involving major cocoa manufacturers established the Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation System intended to monitor thousands of farms in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire for child labor conditions, but the program reached less than 20% of the child laborers. Despite these efforts, goals to reduce child labor in West Africa by 70% before 2020 are frustrated by persistent poverty, absence of schools, expansion of cocoa farmland, and increased demand for cocoa.


title: Chocolate

text: In April 2018, the Cocoa Barometer report stated: "Not a single company or government is anywhere near reaching the sector-wide objective of the elimination of child labor, and not even near their commitments of a 70% reduction of child labor by 2020".