Thursday, October 31, 2019
Daily Read: Lithwick on Kavanaugh
In commentary on Slate, Dahlia Lithwick assesses how or whether we should "turn the page" on the disturbing confirmation hearings of the newest SCOTUS Justice, Brett Kavanaugh.
She writes that two women Justices have
hailed him as a mentor to his female clerks or as a collegial member of the Nine and urged us, in the case of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, to look to the future and turn the page. It is, of course, their actual job to get over it. They will spend the coming years doing whatever they can to pick off a vote of his, here and there, and the only way that can happen is through generosity and solicitude and the endless public performance of getting over it. I understand this.
As a Supreme Court reporter, I am also expected to afford the new justice that same generosity and solicitude. As a journalist, I am finding it hard to do. After all, he is a man who has already publicly condemned his critics to suffer his wrath for embarrassing him. He is a man who has promised that his doubters and detractors will “reap the whirlwind.”
Lithwick raises the question of what we "owe" to the newest Justice — and the Court and the judiciary — a year later.
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/conlaw/2019/10/daily-read-lithwick-on-kavanaugh.html