New Delhi: Hundreds of law professors in the US are appealing to the Senate to reject Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination because of the manner in which he conducted himself during the recent hearing on sexual misconduct allegations.
According to a Guardian report, the signatories in two letters have stated that Kavanaugh’s display of contempt towards members of Congress indicates a political bias “that could call into question his future rulings, and a temperament unsuited to a lifetime position on the highest court”.
In one letter, a group of eminent women law professors from the American Association of Law Schools have accused Kavanaugh of showing disrespect towards women after he took a swing at Amy Klobuchar, a senator from Minnesota. At last week’s hearing, Klobuchar had asked Kavanaugh if he ever got so drunk that he couldn’t remember what had happened the previous night. To which, he had replied, “You’re asking about blackout. I don’t know, have you?”
The second letter, which has been signed by hundreds of professors reportedly describes Kavanaugh to have come through as intemperate, inflammatory and partial in the hearing, instead of cooperating with the senators attempting to probe the allegations against him.
In September, Christine Blasey Ford, a university professor in California accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. After Deborah Ramirez, another woman who came forward alleging sexual misonduct by Kavanaugh in the 1983-84 academic year, when both attended Yale University, president Donald Trump had defended Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. “Judge Kavanaugh is an outstanding person. I am with him all the way,” Trump had said.
This Monday, however, the White House authorised the FBI to expand the ambit of “its abbreviated investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh by interviewing anyone it deems necessary”.