Is Kavanaugh the Kind of Guy You’d Cast as a Judge?

By SAM URETSKY

It was a quiet week, and for once President Trump was essentially a bit player. Oh, he hung around as an éminence grise, but for once he wasn’t the center of attention, even if it was, ultimately, all about him. Perhaps Judge Brett Kavanaugh was nothing more than a MacGuffin. Even so, his performance was compared favorably to Humphrey Bogart in The Caine Mutiny, Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men and Frederick March in Inherit the Wind. Bogart and Nicholson received Academy Award nominations for their performances, and while March wasn’t nominated for an Oscar, he won Best Actor at the Berlin International Film Festival.

The difference between life and the movies is that in the movies, you know how the story will be resolved. The United States Senate is less predictable. In his opening statement, Judge Kavanaugh said “These are last-minute smears, pure and simple. They debase our public discourse. And the consequences extend beyond any one nomination. Such grotesque and obvious character assassination — if allowed to succeed — will dissuade competent and good people of all political persuasions from serving our country.”

Beyond that, Judge Kavanaugh said, “This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.” The ability to recognize threats and conspiracies is a well established trait of conservatives, and this alone tells us everything we need to know about Judge Kavanaugh, but wait, wait, there’s more.

It’s important to realize that one of the classic logical fallacies is reasoning from a contrapositive. For example, while it’s true that all cows eat grass, it isn’t true that all animals that eat grass are cows. Now the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has an Office of Justice Programs (OJP) and this in turn has SMART which stands for Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking. SMART, in turn, deals with adult and juvenile sex offenders, recognizing that there is a difference. SMART recognizes that “Adolescents who commit sex offenses have much less extensive criminal histories, fewer antisocial peers, and fewer substance abuse problems compared with nonsexual offenders. … Observed sexual recidivism rates are generally lower for juveniles than adult sex offenders ranging from 7 to 13 percent.”

The National Criminal Justice Association has put together a webinar covering recognition and treatment of sex offenders. In the section on etiology, they discuss the influences that may lead a child to become a sex offender. They also discuss some of the personality traits that are seen in juvenile sex offenders. One of them is hypermasculinity: “Constellation of beliefs that a masculine identity involves: power, risk taking, toughness, dominance, aggressiveness, honor defending, competitiveness, and impersonal sexuality.” Another personality aspect is Callous-Unemotional Traits: “ Lack of emotional responsiveness (unemotional). Lack of normal empathy responses (callous). Not emotionally invested in others or conventional achievement (uncaring).”

There are other traits seen in juvenile sex offenders, and ultimately a collection of character traits are not totally predictive. Still, Judge Kavanagh seems to have many traits that go beyond what would be desirable in a person making determinations that will affect the lives of millions of people for decades to come.

When President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor, he said that the two basic qualifications were a rigorous intellect and an understanding of the limits of the judicial role, an understanding that a judge’s job is to interpret, not make, law. But, he said, “these qualities alone are insufficient. We need something more. For as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, ‘The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.’ Experience being tested by obstacles and barriers, by hardship and misfortune; experience insisting, persisting, and ultimately overcoming those barriers. It is experience that can give a person a common touch and a sense of compassion; an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live. And that is why it is a necessary ingredient in the kind of justice we need on the Supreme Court.” Amen!

Sam Uretsky is a writer and pharmacist living in New York. Email sdu01@outlook.com.

From The Progressive Populist, November 1, 2018

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