Brett Kavanaugh, touted by his alma mater when he seemed poised to join three other Yale Law School graduates on the Supreme Court, defended himself in an extraordinary hearing Thursday stemming from accusations of sexual misconduct, including one alleged to have taken place at Yale, where he was also an undergraduate.
On Thursday, about 70 law students gathered in a student lounge to watch the Senate Judiciary Committee question Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, a California research psychologist who said Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed and groped her when the two were in high school.
Though Thursday’s hearing centered around an encounter alleged to have occurred in suburban Washington D.C., the years Kavanaugh spent at Yale have come under scrutiny during a strikingly bitter confirmation process.
The law school was closed to the press Thursday. Elsa Mota, a second year law student from Miami, said the mood inside was somber and tense. Earlier this week, hundreds of students staged a sit-in and walked out of class to protest Kavanaugh’s nomination after another woman, Deborah Ramirez, said Kavanaugh exposed himself to her while the two were classmates at Yale.
The school itself has become a player in the saga. When Kavanaugh was nominated by President Donald Trump in July, the law school’s dean and three professors praised his brilliant and lucid legal opinions and mentorship of “a diverse set of clerks, in all respects.”
The dean, Heather Gerken, said she had known Kavanaugh “for many years,” and could “personally attest that, in addition to his government and judicial service, Judge Kavanaugh has been a longtime friend to many of us in the Yale Law School community.”
Some at the law school were “elated” at the time, Carl Jiang, a second year law student from Chicago, said on Thursday.
“This is an alum; this bolsters the credibility of the school,” Jiang, 25, recalled the line of thought. “We should be celebrating it.”
Jiang, however, did not support Kavanugh’s ascent to the high court. He felt the school’s championing of him pointed a readiness, across the institution, to embrace the prestige of another Supreme Court placement without examining the judge’s record.
Mota, the law student from Miami, had met Kavanaugh for lunch with a group of other students in April. He dispensed advice on getting clerkships, she said, the coveted placements that can catapult young graduates through the ranks of the judiciary. She shook his hand; he gave out his personal email address.
A first-year law student at the time, Mota knew only Kavanaugh was a judge. She didn’t know he was being groomed at the time by legal circles hoping to position him as President Trump’s second nominee, and cement a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
“I had no idea he was on a shortlist,” Mota said, “or that he was even important enough, or good enough, to be considered” for the Supreme Court.
The accusation that Kavanugh drunkenly exposed himself to a classmate has clouded his time in New Haven. Gerken, who two months earlier had lauded him as “a longtime friend” of the law school, said on Monday that the allegations were “rightly causing deep concern.”
That day, hundreds of law school students staged a sit-in to protest Kavanaugh’s nomination; dozens more traveled to Washington, where two students were arrested for demonstrating inside Senate office buildings.
Kavanaugh, both defiant and tearful during Thursday’s hearing, called the allegations of sexual misconduct a “calculated and political hit,” engineered by Democrats still smarting from the 2016 election and bankrolled by millions of dollars in left-wing money.
“You’ve tried hard; you’ve given it your all,” Kavanaugh told Senate Democrats. “No one can question your effort. But your coordinated and well-funded effort to destroy my good name, and destroy my family, will not drive me out.”
Fifty faculty members sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, urging its members to open an FBI investigation into Blasey Ford’s allegations. Ramming through Kavanaugh’s appointment could shake confidence in the confirmation process and the Supreme Court itself, they wrote.
In a statement, Gerken, the law school dean, called the letter “thoughtful,” but said she was precluded by university policy from taking a stance for or against a particular nominee.
Since the misconduct allegations surfaced, Jiang said the early support Kavanaugh enjoyed at the law school has become more muted. But some, he said, are “supporting a slower, quote un-quote, deliberate process: ‘Let’s wait to protest, let’s wait to pass judgment.’”
“I respect that their intention is to have a very fair process,” he added, “but I think too often those arguments are used to cudgel survivors. Ironically, it’s to speed up the confirmation process and allow him to be confirmed without a full hearing, with everyone who’s come forth.”
Jenny Tumas, a second-year law student from Los Alamos, N.M., stressed that because Kavanaugh does not face criminal charges, the same standards for burden of proof or due process do not apply. Senators are tasked explicitly with examining Kavanaugh’s character, Tumas, 26, said, unlike in a criminal trial where character evidence is off limits.
“To suggest that we need to have a presumption of innocence and a really high standard, it’s a way to speed up the process, silence people who are coming forward and push a political agenda that wants to ignore the character of this person,” she said.
Being nominated to the Supreme Court is “a privilege,” a process that cannot be compared to a criminal trial, said Kayla Morin, a second-year law student from Portage, Mich.
“He’s not being prosecuted, he cannot be imprisoned for this — it’s a privilege to be nominated for the Supreme Court,” Morin said. “It’s not the same standard for due process rights as in a courtroom.”
Morin, 23, was traveling to Washington D.C. for a demonstration when she read Ramirez’s account of Kavanaugh drunkenly exposing himself at Yale. Her allegations made “the call for an FBI investigation even stronger,” Morin said. “As more and more of these women come forward, we believe, and our classmates believe, that they all have a right to be heard and there should be a full and impartial investigation.”
Since Kavanaugh was nominated in July, Tumas, the law student from Los Alamos, said she’s felt disappointed, frustrated and, at times, inspired. She’s not resigned herself to what role her school has already played in the Kavanaugh saga: launching pad to a sterling legal career, site of alleged misconduct. On campus and in the nation’s capital, Yale students are trying to shape this story before it ends, she said.
“It’s a mix of anger and frustration and sadness — and also, for me, it feels very powerful and heartening,” she said, “to get to be a part of trying to change the story and the institution’s role in it.”
