Justice on Trial, a courtroom drama in which the word “drama” is uppermost, concerns the ordeal of now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh at the hands of the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Democrats of the United States Senate. But this is only a part of the story.
The larger one is how the national Democratic Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson and led over time by FDR, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy, have been swallowed alive by the abortion rights movement. Indeed, at some moments the party seems to exist for this purpose alone and no other.
The problem began 32 years ago when Ted Kennedy dashed to the floor of the Senate moments after the words “Robert Bork” had been uttered to deliver a pre-emptive strike of atomic proportions. Act Two came three years years later, with the Hill-Thomas hearings — of which the less said the better — followed last year by the Kavanaugh hearings, which were in every way bigger and better. These featured death threats to solons, the occupation of Congress, porn stars named Stormy, and worse.
On the day that Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, conservative activist Penny Nance had said to her colleagues “that the nominee, whoever he was, would face an allegation of sexual assault, probably from his distant past, such as high school.” This forecast came true to the very last detail when Dianne Feinstein, conveniently waiting until the hearings were over, released a letter from a woman now in California claiming that Kavanaugh had tried to rape her when both were in prep school, somewhere in Maryland in the 1980’s. She couldn’t remember the time or place of the event, and nobody else could recall the situation in which she claimed it occurred.
The lack of details the accuser could give and the absence of people who could attest to her story only intensified the will to believe her. And her presentation of lost-ness made her seem more appealing. Meanwhile, Kavanaugh’s traits — Irish and Catholic, a jock, and a beer-drinker — seemed to drive the Washington Post and its readers insane.
Kavanaugh survived by the guts and the grace of swing vote Susan Collins, who received death threats and attacks of fake ricin and who stood like a rock against the hysterics. But whether this bout broke the fever or just built it up to be even worse next time, sadly remains to be seen.
The scorched earth nature of modern judicial proceedings is not wholly the Democrats’ fault, though. They started in the 1980’s, when Ronald Reagan’s enduring popularity proved the right wing was not going anywhere. Polling showed the abortion issue split — and not exactly split, but bunched in the middle, leaving those on the edges irate. Rather than struggle with public opinion, which was not going anywhere, the political Right turned its attention to the courts, with mixed results ever since.
Ironically, no one hates the current politicized state of the American judiciary more than Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the pro-choice stalwart for whose health the left-wing prays daily (some offering to donate their organs to her should they ever be needed). Ginsburg thinks that persuasion ought to prevail on culture war issues. She longs for the old days before abortion emerged as a partisan issue, and individual conscience was allowed to prevail.
Thanks to her, and thanks also to Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino who wrote this book first. They got in first with the truth, pre-empting the Jane Mayers and others who may come in later with something else.
