Although hey, he's a great carpool dad and gives clerkships to kids of prominent law professors, so NBD why not hand him massive, largely unchecked judicial power for the next 30-40 years based on those "character" references. #FFS 12/
When a president openly seeks to manipulate DOJ to shield cronies from prosecution, efforts to manage courts won't be far behind. In fact, that process already has been long underway. Sadly, GOP senators are too complicit either to see that or care. 13/
"When asked ... if he condemns questioning a judge’s impartiality on the basis of his or her ethnicity, as Trump did with Curiel during the presidential campaign, Kavanaugh chose to dodge and save face rather than display judicial courage." 15/
"If we expect judges to reach conclusions based solely on reliable evidence, Kavanaugh’s savage and bitter attack demonstrated exactly the opposite sensibility."
A 5-4 right-wing majority—installed mostly by minority popular vote presidents, in the face of solid progressive majorities throttled using illegitimate means—does not "perfectly reflect" anything. To the contrary, it is a starkly imperfect reflection of where we are politically.
Partial credit to @adamliptak for this shade at the end of the piece, but it's far too mild in relation to the actual scale of the Court's legitimacy crisis.
"We have differing views about the other qualifications of Judge Kavanaugh. But we are united, as professors of law and scholars of judicial institutions, in believing that [he] did not display the impartiality and judicial temperament requisite to sit on the highest court"
Over 900 signatories and counting, from over 150 law schools, as of this morning. lawprofessor.net