Unless we miss our guess over here at the Law Blogger, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Brett Kavanaugh will be confirmed by the United States Senate later today. Kavanaugh will fill the SCOTUS seat vacated by Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Advice and Consent of the Senate

Article II, section 2 of the United States Constitution, where the rubber meets the road on the concept of balancing the branches of government, states:

[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate ... [to] appoint ... Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law...

America is Divided

It is impossible to avoid the crush of 24/7 news coverage of Judge Kavanaugh's nomination to the SCOTUS. America is now divided into two intractable camps: those that support Judge Kavanaugh and those that stand by his accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

Judge Kavanaugh narrowly emerged from the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, irreparably damaged in the all-important court of public opinion. While the Judiciary Committee voted 11-10 to advance the nomination to the plenary Senate, a political compromise forced an expedited supplemental FBI investigation into Dr. Ford's allegations.

Ford claims that Kavanaugh, when they were at a high school party in the early 1980s, groped her; that he laid on top of her placing her in fear that he was going to rape her; and that he placed his hand over her mouth to prevent her from calling for help. [Criminal conduct on behalf of Kavanaugh, if true; criminal conduct on behalf of Dr. Ford, if untrue.] But for these 30-year old allegations, Kavanaugh, a conservative jurist, should have been a lock for Senate confirmation to the SCOTUS as the latest Trump appointee.

And of course, this being America, these allegations spawned other sets of allegations of more groping and excessive college drinking. All of the sudden, Judge Kavanaugh is no longer the conservative federal jurist from Yale Law School and the Georgetown Preparatory School [where SCOTUS Justice Neil Gorsuch also attended].

Although not a public document, the supplemental FBI investigation into Dr. Ford's allegations was supplied to Senators two days ago; the Senate vote is scheduled for later today. Apparently, in gleaning from statements by a few select Senators, the FBI report failed to corroborate any of Dr. Ford's specific allegations. We here at the Law Blogger would love to have been a fly on the wall when FBI agents interviewed Judge Kavanaugh's Jesuit prep-school wing-man, best-selling author, and general rabble-rouser Mark Judge. Alas, that's for another post.

With all this drama, you would think that the Federalist Society and the White House would have caught some wind of the strange brew wafting their way, and simply avoided all the burnt political capital by going to another conservative choice.

There is no question that Judge Kavanaugh, sitting on the D.C. Circuit through which momentous cases routinely flow, is a credentialed conservative jurist. The Washington Post, from an analysis of his published opinions over the past decade, concluded Kavanaugh was the most conservative jurist on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in every policy area. [Note: consider the source; this is the same newspaper that initially reported Dr. Ford's letter to Senator Feinstein.] Nevertheless, his published decisions are along the lines of Justice Antonin Scalia; he is an originalist and a textualist, meaning that he does not find individual rights by reading "between the lines" of the Constitution. Like Scalia, he is far more conservative than moderate, and exhibits an expansive view of executive power.

This last bit is especially troubling during the Trump era. Listening to President Trump this week, grandstanding for Republicans on the eve of the mid-term elections, trying to minimize and dismiss Dr. Ford's allegations -comparing them to his own women troubles- was pathetic. If he could, Trump would do away with this "Advice and Consent" stuff altogether.  Trump was particularly un-Presidential when he mocked Dr. Blasey-Ford -her diction and her lack of memory on some details.

So here we are, with another Advise and Consent process that has torn the country apart. One thing is painfully clear: someone is lying.

There are no procedural rules for the Advise and Consent process. The Judiciary Committee is not a courtroom subject to rules of evidence and procedure. The nominee is not afforded the same constitutional rights as an individual accused of a crime. Likewise, an accuser does not need to prove allegations "beyond a reasonable doubt", the highest evidentiary standard.

Dr. Blasey Ford's Camp

Dr. Ford's allegations provide yet another high-profile example of the power, yet limitation, of the #metoo movement. Maddeningly for this camp, these allegations are so stale they are nearly impossible to corroborate. Thus, for this group, the allegations are destined to go down in history, like those of Anita Hill and Justice Clarence Thomas, as another unresolved allegation of "he said, she said" sexual assault.

Yesterday afternoon, Senator Susan Collins [R-Maine] focused on a lack of corroboration to an ancient allegation, signaling that she would be voting for Kavanaugh's confirmation. Under the threat of a felony charge [lying to a federal agent], apparently none of the individuals specifically mentioned by Dr. Ford, corroborated any of the basic details of her account to the FBI investigators.

Victims of sexual assault, for many different reasons, decide to suffer in silence for decades. Professionals in the criminal justice industry know that many survivors take their plights to their graves.

Criticism of the Ford supporters includes calling the detonation-event itself into question: the so-called leaking of Dr. Ford's letter to Senator Diane Feinstein to a ravenous media-machine that simply cannot get enough sexual raw meat. When the media took this ball and ran with it, Dr. Ford was the one that made the down payment up front. Some say she was betrayed by the very people she turned to as a #metoo survivor. For her part, Senator Collins does not believe that her colleague from California disseminated the original letter to the press. These and other Senators are now all running for political cover.

Judge Kavanaugh's Camp

The Judge's supporters are glad that Senator Collins saw things their way and did not find Dr. Ford's allegations persuasive by even a preponderance of the evidence in the Senate record. Certainly not persuasive enough to block Kavanaugh's nomination. Also, the judge's camp is quick to point out that this has become a derailed media circus -which is true- focusing on sex, beer and UB40, rather than the judge's 12-year record from the federal bench.

These supporters emphasize that Judge Kavanaugh has already undergone half a dozen FBI investigations during his storied career as a federal judge. This conservative group is looking forward to possibly 4-decades of right-leaning opinions from this truly conservative jurist, especially when paired with Justice Gorsich, his Jesuit-trained prep school classmate. The Federalist Society recognized that Kavanaugh, unlike his Reagan-appointee predecessor, Justice Anthony Kennedy, who became the infamous "swing vote" on the SCOTUS, will remain true to his conservative faith.

If the right cases come along, you can expect this jurist to increase the powers of the executive branch, and limit individual rights in favor of the powers of the state. In a perfect storm, a case involving abortion may get teed-up for his deciding vote; he may even be assigned by Chief Justice John Roberts to write the historic opinion.

Like Dr. Ford, however, Judge Kavanaugh is not getting out of this process unscathed. His otherwise stellar career as a conservative federal jurist now bears this horrid permanent stain.

As with the Federalist Society, we do not think this episode will affect the tone or tenor of now-Justice Kavanaugh's prospective SCOTUS opinions, yet plenty of questions remain in our minds about this jurist; this person. Despite his apology in the Wall Street Journal, we saw his core-temperment in the heat of battle when he testified; it was not pretty; it was ugly. The picture above truly, is worth a thousand words. Where unproven allegations of sexual abuse are concerned, the smoke usually manifests some type of fire.

While the fire in Kavanaugh's case was extinguished long ago, you won't be seeing this SCOTUS justice giving speeches or lectures at Harvard Law School. He will be hunted and confronted in public until the day he dies.

We shall see if he, like Clarence Thomas, sits silent during oral argument, never asking questions of the lawyers arguing their cases before him; preferring to communicate through written opinions. In any event, a decades-long tenure will be Kavanaugh's best revenge. His place in history, however, already has been set in stone.

America Gets Screwed

Because one of these two people is lying, America gets screwed. If Dr. Ford told the truth, this guy's transgressions, albeit over 30-years ago, belie a violent and abusive core, inappropriate -even disqualifying- for any judge, let alone a Supreme Court Justice. If Judge Kavanaugh told the truth to the Judiciary Committee, then a special place in Hell awaits women that manufacture and weaponize false allegations of sexual abuse. Take your pick; it's all bad folks.

Our take-away from all this drama is that public respect and trust in our all-important judicial system is eroded by spectacles like this one. The lawyers at our firm are constantly advancing the legitimate causes of our clients before county and state judges. We depend on these judges to fairly resolve important legal conflicts.

In times like these, we thank our colleagues on the bench that have remained ever-vigilant for the right result in every case, and who have remained just and impartial despite the strong, often pungent, political currents of the day.

www.clarkstonlegal.com
Post #620