Last week, lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee went after Neomi Rao, Trump’s nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit Court, for a number of her college writings. While many were harmlessly provocative, most questionable was an article lamenting “hysteria over date rape.” The article included commonsense advice for responsible drinking, but also a brief passage that noted, “And if she drinks to the point where she can no longer choose, well, getting to that point was part of her choice,” implying that an intoxicated woman would share “moral responsibility” if she became a victim of assault.
To be clear, Rao wrote that as an undergraduate in college and has since spent over two decades studying, practicing, and teaching the law. She surely understands the very basic and widely accepted standard that incapacitation impedes ability to consent and the moral and legal culpability of a rape rests on the shoulders of the perpetrator not the victim.
