Kamala Harris, one of the many people running for president in 2020, says that the Senators do not have to find Kavanaugh guilty to vote against his nomination. First, let’s be honest. After thirty-six years and no police report, there is no way in heck, you could ever find Kavanaugh guilty.
He has a long and storied life in the public eye and the Democrats could not find one person to say a single bad thing to say about Kavanaugh. But, suddenly, we are to believe that he is a sex fiend, who tried to rip the clothes off a girl in order to rape her? That’s what the Democrats would have you believe.
An op-ed published Friday by the Washington Post written by Caprice Roberts, a visiting professor at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, supported Harris’ position on reasonable doubt, flatly stating that Kavanaugh’s “guilt or innocence is not the issue”.
Yes, Kavanaugh is entitled to fairness and impartiality. But when it comes to process, let’s be clear: If Ford testifies before the Judiciary Committee, if committee staffers interview her privately or if she puts her story on the official Senate record in some other way, senators aren’t tasked with measuring her accusation or Kavanaugh’s denial by the familiar “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard applied in criminal proceedings, or with rendering a verdict of guilty or not.
Rather, the purpose of Supreme Court confirmation hearings is to allow senators to provide “advice and consent” on the president’s nominees for the nation’s highest court. Whether or not there’s conclusive proof of the alleged assault, every senator is entitled to vote yes or no on elevating Kavanaugh from his current position as a federal appeals court judge to the pinnacle of American law based on their individual, subjective assessments of whatever testimony is provided. Senators also, properly, weigh their constituents’ views on the nominee and the testimony. Even if senators aren’t sure what, if anything, happened between Ford and Kavanaugh, if they think the accusation is probable, or even plausible, and decide that it’s too great a risk to put a maybe-sexual-assaulter on the high court, they’re entitled to vote no. If they believe that Kavanaugh lied under oath in answers to written or oral questions related to any part of the confirmation process, they’re entitled to vote no.
…Kavanaugh’s public hearings, then, and any inquiry now into the accusations against him, are less like a trial and more like a high-stakes job interview — and this job comes with life tenure. The main point of the hearings is to determine the nominee’s fitness for the post. Senators evaluate judicial qualifications, record, demeanor and philosophy. Modern judicial nominees undergo incredibly thorough vetting in preparation because they know that senators may also explore every aspect of their past. Allegations of sexual misconduct fall well within the scope of relevant considerations. Because guilt or innocence isn’t the issue, but instead fitness for the Supreme Court, the burden of proof isn’t, and shouldn’t be, on Ford, the accuser; it remains on Kavanaugh.
What difference does it make anyway? The Democrats were against Kavanaugh from the moment his nomination was announced. There is no way they were ever going to vote for him, regardless. The only Democrats who would have ever voted yes are incumbents from Red States and the Democrats are trying to give them an excuse to vote no.