Yale Law Fails the Kavanaugh Test
Each Supreme Court vacancy renews the perennial debate about the best way forward for constitutional law. Law-school graduates have a special obligation to inform that discussion.
This week, as Americans confronted Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, Yale’s legal community twice failed to responsibly discharge its civic duty. A statement published by Yale Law School was strike one. A response signed by dozens of Yale Law students, alumni, and educators was strike two. Together they’re a case study in ways that self-indulgence from elites can dumb down civic life, though I should be clear that not all Yalies are implicated.
Few issues in American civics are as complex as a Supreme Court nomination. Even the most conscientiously informed citizen can be forgiven for meeting a nomination with uncertainty.
Supreme Court justices interpret the most contentious passages in the U.S. Constitution, often rendering judgment in precisely those cases where educated people of goodwill are in sustained conflict about the proper outcome. That job would be hugely difficult even if everyone accurately anticipated all the controversies that would underpin future cases and agreed on the optimal jurisprudential philosophy that should guide high-court jurists.
Yet many important matters that
