“Every judge needs to have both the intellectual capacity to deal with the incredible variety and complexity of the issues and an instinctive understanding of the human implications of the decisions being made. And I just talked to her [Ruth Bader Ginsburg] about her life and her experience, and her family and her work and judging and that‘s really what I wanted to know— you know, that it wasn’t just stuff that she had written, it was way more than just an intellectual concern of hers. She got the actual human impact of these decisions. I chose Ruth Bader Ginsburg for three reasons: First, in her years on the bench, she has genuinely distinguished herself as one of our nation’s best judges, progressive in outlook, wise in judgment, balanced and fair in her opinions. Second, over the course of a lifetime in her pioneering work on behalf of the women of this country, she has compiled a truly historic record of achievement in the finest tradition of American law and citizenship. And finally, in the years ahead, she will be able to be a force for consensus-building on the Supreme Court, just as she has been on the Court of Appeals, so that our judges can become an instrument of our common unity in the expression of their fidelity to the Constitution.” – President Bill Clinton, New York Times, June 15, 1993.
The quotes refer to Pres. Bill Clinton’s transcript of his announcement in choosing Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the U.S. Supreme Court. “After her opening statements, and the next two days featured thirty-minute-question-and-answer periods by individual committee members, before banging the closing gavel at 2:43 that Friday afternoon, Senator Hatch commended the president for making an excellent choice. Senator Biden then thanked Senator Hatch for being a “gentlemen and a scholar,” and ended by saying that “next Thursday hopefully we will be able to make the recommendation to the U.S. Senate, “ according to notes on Ginsburg’s nomination, as cited by Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her book, My Own Words.
Fast forward to Sept. 27’s U.S. Senate hearings wherein Dr. Christine Basley Ford came forward to give a credible, authentic, and reliable testimony about Judge Brent Kavanaugh’s attempted rape assault on her when they were in high school. Brent was 17yo at that time, she was 15 yo.
Before the 21 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, she provided testimony when she attended a party in a suburban house in Montgomery County in the 1980’s. She went upstairs to use the bathroom. But someone pushed her to a bedroom, pinned to the bed, and the door was locked. Brent Kavanaugh pressed himself on top of her, grinding down on her and twice Mark Judge threw himself on Kavanaugh and Ford. When she screamed, Kavanaugh put his hands over Dr. Ford’s mouth and groped her and attempted to remove her clothes. Inebriated and stumbling drunk, Kavanaugh had difficulty removing her clothes as she had also a one-piece bathing suit underneath.
“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” said Ford, now a 51-year-old research psychologist in northern California. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.” Ford said she was able to escape when Kavanaugh’s friend and classmate at Georgetown Preparatory School, Mark Judge, jumped on top of them, sending all three tumbling. She said she ran from the room, briefly locked herself in a bathroom and then fled the house,” Washington Post’s Emma Brown reported on Sept. 16, 2018.
As she testified, America was riveted watching her testimony on television, listening to podcasts, while inside gyms, break rooms, students’ lounges, airplanes and homes, as reported by MSNBC. Reporters watched how women cried with Dr. Ford, anguished by their own incidents of trauma, and also “moved by her credible, reliable and truthful testimony.” That assertion in quotes is not mine, but was enunciated by former U.S. federal prosecutors interviewed on MSNBC, as Cynthia Alksne.
Lack of judicial temperament and credibility
One of the judicial requirements in any branch of government in America is the judge’s ability to be impartial and to have the judicial temperament to stay calm and to restrain oneself.
Cynthia Alksne, Esq. a former U.S. prosecutor described Dr. Ford as a fair and an outstanding witness and contrasted that to Judge Kavanaugh’s screaming, unhinged behavior, very partisan in describing that there was a “left-wing conspiracy, a vengeance being carried out on behalf of the Clintons, fueled by pent-up anger on the Trump win,” in his opening statement to the US Senate Confirmation hearing.
It revealed his inability to be impartial and instead, demonstrated his bias and unsubstantiated, extreme points of view. While it could be argued that he was simply indignant as he feels that he is being falsely accused, he acted inappropriately and cultivated more doubts about his judicial fitness to have a lifetime position in the U.S. Supreme Court.
When he was questioned 19 times and more directly by Senator Dick Durbin if he would call for an FBI investigation, his answer was silence, a long pause, silence, until he was questioned again and then, he said he would go along with what the committee wanted to do.
Would you not find this strange, as it was Dr. Ford who asked for a federal investigation, she submitted herself to a polygraph test and yet, she is not an officer of the court and Judge Kavanaugh is, and did not care to arrive at the truth, through an FBI investigation? He also had not done any polygraph test. Though others will say that the polygraph test results are not court-admissible evidence, the polygraph test is an indicator of one’s truthfulness.
He was asked about a “Renate Alumnius” entry on his high school yearbook where he and his male friends posed for a photo and explained that this was their way of showing their admiration towards Renate Schroeder Dolphin. Hardly true, as they even had a rhyme about not having a date and to seek Renate. “Renate Alumni jokes were part of the demeaning pattern in which boys bragged about having sex with Dolphin,” according to Vox’s Anna North on Sept. 25, 2018.
The former US federal prosecutor Alksne described Kavanaugh’s demeanor and itemized the lies he has made, including the “Leahy lies,” where he supposedly used stolen staff briefing notes prepared by the Democrats, and when asked about this in a Senate hearing he lied about it, another indicator of his lack of credibility.
When Judge Kavanaugh made his opening statement, he relied primarily on: “My two male friends who were allegedly there, who knew me well, have told this committee under penalty of felony that they do not recall any such party and that I never did or would do anything like this. Dr. Ford’s allegation is not merely uncorroborated, it is refuted by the very people she says were there, including by a long-time friend of hers. Refuted.”
It turns out Judge Kavanaugh’s statement is false and untrue, as he did not bother to watch Dr. Ford’s testimony and he would have learned that the single piece of evidence he relied upon was not done by Leland Ingham Keyser but her attorney. According to the Washington Post and the personal testimony of Dr. Ford that Keyser texted her: “while Keyser said she did not recall the party, but that she was close friends with Ford and that she believes Ford’s allegation.”
Kavanaugh’s disrespect towards Senator Amy Klobuchar
When he was queried if he remembers drinking beer, specifically a lot of beer, Judge Kavanaugh responded: “You are asking about a blackout. Have you?” It caught the Senator by surprise, yet she remained calm and repeated the question and no response. She said “I don’t have a drinking problem,” but described her father’s alcoholism and still goes to his AA (Alcoholic Anonymous) meetings. Judge Kavanaugh, with an indignant tone, “I also don’t have one.” Afterwards, he apologized to the Senator.
But Kavanaugh’s statement that he has no drinking problem is reputed by Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy’s Sept. 27, 2018 account describing the “Judge’s speech he gave at Yale Law School in which he described stumbling out of a bus at 4:45 am after bar-hopping in Boston. The bus had a keg on it. He was asked about that speech on Thursday, but characterized it simply as a fun night out with friends.”
When asked about the yearbook’s reference to “Devil’s Triangle,” Tim Murphy reported that Kavanaugh told the senators that it was a drinking game he played with friends. Yet, David Enrich, one of the Times’ reporters disputed that, as Kavanaugh’s own classmates say those are also false.
At the end of the day, America: The Jesuit Review Magazine had written an editorial calling for Kavanaugh’s nomination to be withdrawn, “But even if the credibility of the allegation has not been established beyond a reasonable doubt and even if further investigation is warranted to determine its validity or clear Judge Kavanaugh’s name, we recognize that this nomination is no longer in the best interests of the country. While we previously endorsed the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh on the basis of his legal credentials and his reputation as a committed textualist, it is now clear that the nomination should be withdrawn.”
The American Bar Association called for the confirmation vote to be postponed until FBI investigates allegations.
Senator Doug Jones, from Alabama, issued this statement at 1012pm: “The Kavanaugh nomination process has been flawed from the beginning and incomplete at the end. Dr. Ford was credible and courageous and I am concerned about the message our vote will be sending to our sons and daughters, as well as victims of sexual assault. I will be voting no.”
The LA Times’s headline reads: “Do we really want a man consumed with rage, self-pity and hate on the Supreme Court?”
For this writer, Judge Kavanaugh failed to meet the high standard met by Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s nomination and ultimately her endorsement by the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, 18-0.
On August 3, 1993, US Senate by a vote of 96-3 confirmed Judge Ginsburg to be the Supreme Court’s 107th U.S. Justice. She reminded us in her confirmation hearing statement about Alexander Hamilton’s words: the mission of judges is “to secure a steady, upright, and impartial administration of the laws.”
We just witnessed a judge get unhinged during a Senate Confirmation hearing, a job interview as he called it, and one with a clear bias towards the right and an animus towards the left. Judge Ginsburg added Justice Benjamin Cardozo who said: “Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances.” The U.S. Senate is clearly not giving us a fair, impartial hearing and instead, a sham! What a shame for once an august institution – and it is up to all of us to make our voices heard. Next man or woman up! #notthisnominee #donotconfirmkavanaugh
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Prosy Abarquez-Delacruz, J.D. writes a weekly column for Asian Journal, called “Rhizomes.” She has been writing for AJ Press for 10 years. She also contributes to Balikbayan Magazine. Her training and experiences are in science, food technology, law and community volunteerism for 4 decades. She holds a B.S. degree from the University of the Philippines, a law degree from Whittier College School of Law in California and a certificate on 21st Century Leadership from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She has been a participant in NVM Writing Workshops taught by Prof. Peter Bacho for 4 years and Prof. Russell Leong. She has travelled to France, Holland, Belgium, Japan, Costa Rica, Mexico and over 22 national parks in the US, in her pursuit of love for nature and the arts.
