Some readers may have a problem with this one. And I admit that I still think that Brett Kavanaugh should not have been confirmed to the Supreme Court, even more because of what he did during his confirmation than what he did back in high school.
But now that he is on the Supreme Court, I agree with Sonia Sotomayor. The last thing we need is a Supreme Court that is so partisan that they disintegrate into factions. In an interview with David Axelrod (who was Chief Strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns) Sotormayor said that Kavanaugh was welcomed into the Supreme Court “family”.
When you’re charged with working together for most of the remainder of your life, you have to create a relationship. The nine of us are now a family and we’re a family with each of us our own burdens and our own obligations to others, but this is our work family, and it’s just as important as our personal family. We’ve probably spent more time with each other than most justices spend, who have spouses, with their spouses.
It was Justice [Clarence] Thomas who tells me that when he first came to the Court, another justice approached him and said, “I judge you by what you do here. Welcome.” And I repeated that story to Justice Kavanaugh when I first greeted him here.
Conservative, liberal, those are political terms. Do I suspect that I might be dissenting a bit more? Possibly, but I still have two relatively new colleagues, one very new colleague, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. And we’ve agreed in quite a few cases, we’ve disagreed in a bunch, But you know, let’s see.
We all have families we love, we all care about others, we care about our country, and we care when people are injured. And unfortunately, the current conversation often forgets that. It forgets our commonalities and focuses on superficial differences whether those are language or how people look or the same God they pray to but in different ways. Those differences truly are not important. What is important is those human values we share and those human feelings that we share. But I worry that we forget about that too often.
6 Comments
What good does it do to not make nice? She’s in the minority and needs to get along where she can. I’m not sure Kavanaugh would act the same were their roles reversed. I’m hoping his confirmation hearing changed him. That he has learned what it’s like to be discriminated against and do something with that in a positive way. But hey I’m a Polyanna. And hope is all I have left.
Hope is a good thing. Don’t ever change!
I can forgive Kavanaugh for being a blithering, drunken, self-centered, bully and jerk during high school – many of us weren’t much better. Adolescence isn’t an easy time. I can grant that Mr. Kavanaugh seems to have spent his adult life much more productively. What I can forgive or forget is the fact that he obviously and blatantly lied about all of this and many or substantive issues under oath. He should never have been confirmed. Not because of his unfortunate adolescent behaviors but because he’s still not able to tell the truth or apologize when clearly in the wrong. That’s the mark of a weak person. Not what we need in a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.
MM, I’m not disagreeing with you. I said he should not have been confirmed. But he was, and now I agree with Sotomayor.
Let us pray that he will grow and develop humility, greater self-awareness and honesty. He’s certainly not the Devil but he showed poorly in his confirmation hearings.
Mountain Man, I’m not sure I can forgive attempted rape, regardless of the time gone by or the age of the rapist. But the man is now a Supreme, so in the hopes that he has changed for the better, (after the hearings, I have my doubts), I’m hopeful and waiting to see what he does with his new powers.