A Reflection on Kavanaugh & Complicity in Law School

It has been a particularly painful two weeks to be a woman and a law student. I say particularly, because for this female-identified law student, there is a dull ache that comes with training for this profession. I learn that a reasonable person is in the eye of the beholder, usually a man. I read cases in which women’s experiences are minimized and their desires dismissed. And in cases in which the law claims to protect women, most often white women, I see ulterior motives. At whose expense are I “protected?” A mentor told me that I am “learning the language of power” here. Indeed. The experience of seeing oneself reflected in the law as both marginalized and having the power to perpetuate the marginalization of others is, in a word, heavy. The dull ache. But I still believe that this language can work to change power structures too, so here I am, learning it. The particularly painful moments occur, as they have recently, when I am faced with evidence that my belief is false. As the Senate Judiciary Committee considers the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh and as support for him in some corners of the legal community continues, the intractable nature of power and privilege in the American legal system is laid bare. We confront at this moment the likely future of placing on the United States Supreme Court a man gilded with degrees from powerful institutions, coveted clerkships, and a judgeship that has been noted for its own access to prestige, over the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford. We would make the court of last resort for all Americans, including survivors of sexual assault, have among its justices a man who is credibly accused of sexual violence.

I say we because law students, lawyers, and legal academia have a hand in this. I can’t even distance myself from this nomination by calling it a moral failing of Republicans. This is a moral failing of the law professors who cater to Judge Kavanaugh’s rumored sexualized preferences in his clerkship hiring. This is a moral failing of professors and administrators who know of such preferences or the misconduct of other judges toward their clerks and continue to send them eager applicants anyway. This is a moral failing of students eager to find themselves positioned close to the well-connected judge, the well-connected practitioner, often without thought to the way that person treats the less powerful. I recognize, and am no longer surprised by these actions. We are failing because instead of questioning power, we build it. In the case of Judge Kavanaugh, we have built a house that has sheltered him since he and Ms. Blasey-Ford were teenagers. I have been waking up every day since her story surfaced unable to escape the painful feeling that as much as I hoped to learn the language of power without being groomed in its culture, I am failing.

My personal resistance against this nomination is to not be immobilized by this pain. I will not let it make me feel powerless. Perhaps it is further naivete, but I will not let go of a vision of a justice system in which Christine Blasey Ford felt she would be believed. I will not let go of a vision of a justice system that works for women, for women of color, for people of color, for the LGBTQ+, for indigenous people, for immigrants, for people living with disabilities, for people living in poverty, not simply for the Judge Kavanaughs. The conflict inherent in being conversant in power and privilege in order to dismantle the same is not lost on me, but I am surrounded by peers and colleagues who do not let that conflict rule them. They go to work. They protest. They raise families and challenge their families and friends to practice empathy, respect, and consent. I try to emulate those people. I try to be empathetic but firm against myself when I am drawn to status. And I believe Christine Blasey Ford.