Brett Kavanaugh's Op-Ed Is a Good Argument Against His Confirmation
On Wednesday, the New York Times published a letter that has now been signed by over 2,400 law professors who oppose Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. The letter does not reference the sexual assault allegations made against the nominee, nor does it mention the possibility that he has lied under oath. What troubles the legal community the most is the partisanship exhibited by Kavanaugh as he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday, along with his inability to control his emotions. “We have differing views about the other qualifications of Judge Kavanaugh,” the letter concluded. “But we are united, as professors of law and scholars of judicial institutions, in believing that he did not display the impartiality and judicial temperament requisite to sit on the highest court of our land.”
With a confirmation vote imminent and a small handful of senators still reportedly undecided, Kavanaugh penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal defending his emotional performance at last week’s hearing. “My hearing testimony was forceful and passionate,” he wrote in the piece Thursday night. “That is because I forcefully and passionately denied the allegation against me. At times, my testimony — both in my opening statement and in response to questions — reflected my overwhelming frustration at being wrongly accused, without corroboration, of horrible conduct completely contrary to my record and character. My statement and answers also reflected my deep distress at the unfairness of how this allegation has been handled.”
Kavanaugh’s statement was also astonishingly partisan, and he dedicated a good portion of this op-ed to preaching about how a Supreme Court justice must be “a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no political party, litigant or policy” and how “an independent and impartial judiciary is essential to our constitutional republic.” In doing so, he is essentially making a case against himself. He granted his only interview to a partisan cable news network, and published his op-ed in a partisan publication. In his opening remarks last week, he argued that the sexual assault allegations against him were a “political hit” and “revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.” After continuing to rail against what he described as a “grotesque and coordinated character assassination,” Kavanaugh warned ominously that “what goes around comes around.”
As he made clear at the beginning of his speech, he wrote these remarks himself. These are his beliefs, and they are inarguably partisan. Trying to claim a week later that he’s actually “independent and impartial” doesn’t change anything. On Thursday night, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), a member of the judiciary committee that presided over last week’s hearing, tweeted that Kavanaugh “can’t erase blaming sexual assault allegations” on Democrats.
Link to tweet
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/brett-kavanaugh-op-ed-733395/
