By: Cora-Louise Fleming-Benite and Miles Horner
On July 25th, 2018 Judge Anthony Kennedy, a Supreme Court Justice who was appointed to the position on February 18th, 1988, announced that he was going to retire. His retirement would take place the on the 31st of July. Presently there are four justices on the court who regularly take more liberal positions and four who tend to vote more conservative. Anthony Kennedy was a key Supreme Court Justice because he was a swing vote. Now that he has retired, the Republicans, who control the house, are trying to put in a conservative judge who would help shift the ideology of the court towards the right. Their pick for this job is Brett Kavanaugh.
Recently, Brett Kavanaugh has been accused of sexual assault. The first allegation was from Christine Blasey Ford, who knew Kavanaugh in high school. On September 16th she wrote a letter to the Washington Post, coming forward about her experience. In the letter, Ford accused Kavanaugh of forcing himself on her at a party when she was 15. She says that he pinned her down on a bed and tried to take off her clothes, and covered her mouth when she tried to scream. She has testified that Kavanaugh’s friend, Mark Judge, was in the room and witnessed the assault. Ford had also sent her account in a confidential letter to the top Democrat on the senate judiciary committee, Dianne Feinstein. During her testimony, Ford detailed the lasting effects of the trauma on her life. Ford did not originally speak out about the assault, saying that she was embarrassed and did not want to have to revisit her memories of the attack, a situation many victims of sexual assault have to deal with.
Another allegation has come out from Deborah Ramirez, a former classmate of Kavanaugh from when he was at Yale University. She said that while partaking in a drinking game with other students, she got intoxicated. She says that she later recalls a naked man in front of her; other students were taunting her and trying to get her to touch the man. “I knew that’s not what I wanted, even in that state of mind,” Ramirez said about the harassment. She later heard students saying that Brett Kavanaugh was the man who got naked.
On Thursday, September 27th, Dr Christine Blasey Ford testified in front at the Senate Judiciary Committee. She was very composed in her testimony, and many people, including Donald Trump, the person who nominated Kavanaugh, have said that she was a very credible witness, saying, “I thought her testimony was very compelling and she looks like a very fine woman to me, very fine woman.” Kavanaugh testified later in the afternoon after Ford. In contrast to her testimony, his emotion often manifested itself as anger. He attacked a Senator verbally when he was asked if he’d ever blacked out; he responded, “Have you?” People also noted that there were many small details of his testimony for which there is evidence to believe are untrue. After the testimonies, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send Kavanaugh to the floor with a brief FBI investigation. Several senators are reporting that the investigation is fairly thorough while others believe that the investigation was designed to yield no new information.
Update: On October 6th the Senate voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as the 114th Justice of the United States Supreme Court by a vote of 50-48. He was sworn in later that same day.
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