Brett Kavanaugh Archives - Public Seminar

Politics

Brett Kavanaugh’s Right to Privacy

The legal right to privacy is very old. It’s just that privacy used to be an exclusively male privilege.

July 12, 2022 • by Jill Filipovic

All of a sudden, privacy rights matter to the same conservatives who just stripped women of ours—because powerful men are seeing their privacy violated....

Sex & Gender

Radical Republicans Are Birthing the Nation They Want—and Most Americans Don’t

Never forget that banning abortion has always been a minority position in this country, one that does not represent the will of the voters.

May 3, 2022 • by Claire Potter

Outlawing abortion is the outcome of a radical conservative minority. The success of this minority has been entirely driven by megadonors and organizations that create voter turnout through disinformation and motivating extremists. The notion that a cluster of cells that cannot survive outside a human host, one that has no ...

Radical Republicans Are Birthing the Nation They Want—and Most Americans Don’t

Literature

The Best Books I Read in 2021

And why I liked them

December 15, 2021 • by Claire Potter

It’s the most wonderful time of the year—buying books for other people that you want to read yourself! And on that note, here are the best ones I read last year. All links are to IndieBound to gently nudge you to buy from independent bookstores. Fiction It’s a tie between Douglas Stuart’s ...

Politics

Democrats and the Conservative Supreme Court

Is there incentive to attack the court’s legitimacy?

September 28, 2021 • by John Stoehr

Last week, opinion columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote about the sinking reputation of the United States Supreme Court. With respect to a new abortion law in Texas, which invalidates Roe v. Wade, the Post columnist said that, “The nub of the problem is not that (or not only that) voters are angry that the court allowed ...

Democrats and the Conservative Supreme Court

Democracy

Why Are There No Protestants on the Supreme Court?

Protecting the rights of religious minorities may propel some legal scholars to the top

October 22, 2020 • by Peter Rutland and Şener Aktürk

President Trump’s decision to nominate Amy Coney Barrett for the United States Supreme Court led some Republicans to complain about anti-Catholic bias. Democrats, they charged, were suggesting that Barrett’s Catholic faith could prevent her from making independent judicial decisions. Their evidence? Senator Dianne Feinstein, during Barrett’s earlier confirmation hearing, saying: ...

Why Are There No Protestants on the Supreme Court?

Politics

Covering SCOTUS in the Age of Trump

A conversation with Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick

August 27, 2020 • by Dahlia Lithwick and Claire Potter

Yet in the final days of the last session, Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by George W. Bush, voted with the liberal minority in two key cases. Philosophically committed to consensus-building, this is something Roberts has done at key moments since 2016, raising questions about whether he had taken Kennedy’s ...

Psyche

#MeToo and the Ontological Trauma of Consciousness Raising, Part 1

Reflections and Conversations Across the Gender Divide

February 10, 2020 • by Andrea Singer

It was two years ago that actor Alyssa Milano, in response to the sexual abuse allegations against media mogul Harvey Weinstein, brought activist Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement into the social media mainstream. And it was one year ago that Christine Blasey Ford, in the midst of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court Justice hearing, ...

#MeToo and the Ontological Trauma of Consciousness Raising, Part 1

Activism

Federalist Society Fêtes Kavanaugh

While protestors call for impeachment

November 20, 2019 • by Jo Freeman

Copyright: Jo Freeman Sponsored by the Center for Popular Democracy and Demand Justice, they explained why Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh should be removed from the Supreme Court for lying under oath at his confirmation hearing over a year ago. Copyright: Jo Freeman In the background, the voice of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford could ...

Multi Media

Kavanaugh Redux

October 14, 2019 • by Jo Freeman

Exactly one year after Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as the newest Justice on the Supreme Court, about three hundred of his opponents rallied in front of the Supreme Court. Copyright © 2019 by Jo Freeman This time the theme was Reclaim the Court. Signs were less concerned with sexual harassment than last ...

Feature

Feminism and the Intersectional Politics of Anger

Soraya Chemaly’s Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger

December 28, 2018 • by Holloway Sparks

I began reading Soraya Chemaly’s Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger the week of Brett Kavanaugh’s second appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Like so many other feminists, I found Kavanaugh’s bellicose and evasive performance utterly infuriating, and I was incensed by Republicans’ sputtering indignation that he had to address the accusations ...

Feminism and the Intersectional Politics of Anger

Feature

Constitutional Courts and the Project of Democratic Defense

Courts should make the defense of democracy a priority

October 30, 2018 • by Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq

In the wake of the Kavanaugh nomination, a debate has erupted on the broadly progressive left about the role of constitutional courts in advancing valuable social ends. Samuel Moyn’s broadside against the “juristocracy,” and Andrew Seal’s response here reflect two potential positions. That debate has been so far focused on the relationship ...

Constitutional Courts and the Project of Democratic Defense

Feature

Progressives and the Court

A Response to Samuel Moyn’s “Resisting the Juristocracy”

October 18, 2018 • by Andrew Seal

There’s an old saying among lawyers: When you have the facts on your side, pound on the facts. When you have the law on your side, pound on the law. When you have neither, pound on the table. At first glance, that seems to be Samuel Moyn’s counsel in a widely shared Boston ...