“Justice Ginsburg’s favored technique took the form of a pincer movement,” Justice Kagan wrote. If a question was too specific, she would decline to answer on the ground that she did not want to forecast a vote. If it was too general, she would say a judge should not deal in abstractions or hypothetical questions.

Professor Kagan explained what had counted as too specific: “Roughly, anything that might have some bearing on a case that might someday come before the court.” She also described what had been too general: “Roughly, anything else worthy of mention.”

That summarized Judge Kavanaugh’s approach, too, with only a few notable detours. The most important one was his calculated praise for United States v. Nixon, the 1974 decision in which the Supreme Court unanimously ordered President Richard M. Nixon to comply with a trial subpoena to turn over Oval Office recordings. The decision would, of course, be the leading precedent if a dispute arising from the Mueller investigation reached the Supreme Court.

Singling out the Nixon tapes case was an interesting choice, as it is not part of the usual canon of decisions discussed by Supreme Court nominees. But Judge Kavanaugh ranked it among the Supreme Court’s greatest hits.

Those included, he said, just three others: Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 decision that ruled segregated public schools unconstitutional; Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer, the 1952 decision rejecting President Harry S. Truman’s attempt to seize the nation’s steel mills to aid the war effort in Korea; and Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 decision that established the basis for the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review.

Elevating the Nixon case into that rarefied atmosphere was striking, particularly since the decision is relatively recent. It was issued, after all, just a year after Roe. But where Judge Kavanaugh responded to questions about Roe with equivocation, he embraced the Nixon case.

“It was one of the greatest moments because of the political pressures of the time,” he said. “The courts stood up for judicial independence in a moment of national crisis.”

Still, he drew the line at saying whether, say, a grand jury subpoena calling for Mr. Trump’s testimony should be enforced. That would, he said, require him to answer a hypothetical question.