Many reasons to reject Kavanaugh for the nation’s highest court

Editor:

This letter is written in response to Mr. Joseph Rak’s letter to the editor dated October 4, 2018, in which Mr. Rak makes numerous conclusory statements about the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh without offering an iota of substantiation besides emotional anecdote.

I, too, watched the entirety of not only the September 27, 2018-U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, but also the Committee’s hearings on September 4, 5, 6, and 7th, 2018. I also have my Juris Doctorate from the University at Buffalo School of Law, and I am currently pending admission to the Bar.

Mr. Rak’s synopsis of the events in question sorely misses the mark at every turn. First, Judge Kavanaugh did not display the requisite judicial temperament and impartiality to serve on this nation’s highest court. Don’t take it from me, take it from the more than 2,400 law professors from around the country, including 17 from the University at Buffalo, who have signed a letter stating exactly that.

Second, Judge Kavanaugh openly and repeatedly perjured himself under oath. “Boofing” does not refer to flatulence, it is a term used to describe the ingestion of illicit drugs or alcohol through the anus. The “devil’s triangle” is not a drinking game, it is a sexual threesome involving two men and a woman. Furthermore, Judge Kavanaugh testified that he did not partake in any way in the vetting of judges during his tenure with the George W. Bush administration. His own emails from his time in the Bush White House prove otherwise. There are many other well-documented instances of perjury that I will not go into here.

The rest of Mr. Rak’s regurgitation of conspiratorial talking points from Breitbart are without merit and do not warrant much of a response. Mr. Rak even mischaracterizes what Constitutional “originalism” is. An originalist falls into one of two camps: (1) original intent, which is when the jurist attempts to interpret the Constitution consistent with what was meant by the Founders; and (2) original meaning, which is when the jurist attempts to interpret the Constitution based on their view of what a reasonable person living at the time of the Constitution’s adoption would have understood the text’s ordinary meaning to be. Judge Kavanaugh is decidedly in the latter camp, like former Justice Antonin Scalia.

I believe Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Nearly all of the psychological research indicates that normative misogyny and patriarchy provide a marked disincentive to those who have been the victims of sexual violence from coming forward. I believe that those who reject her allegations out of hand are perpetuating a rape culture all too prevalent in this country. There is no question that the controlled, scientific research in this arena unequivocally concludes that there are far, far (1,000:1, or more) more unreported victims of sexual violence than there are falsely accused individuals.

I hope that Judge Kavanaugh and Mr. Rak’s rigid, regressive ideology are soundly defeated at the ballot box in November. Judge Kavanaugh is utterly bereft of the impartiality, open-mindedness, and temperament required to serve on this nation’s highest court; and I vociferously urge the U.S. Senate to reject his nomination.

Andrew Remley

Albion