Cocktails & Popcorn: Kavanaugh Is Back And So Is Another Scandal - Chua & The Constitutional Crisis

Have you ever wondered how SCOTUS does its legal research?

The clerks!

Yes, once Mommy and Daddy drops those dollars for the sheep skin, the newly graduated Yale "Legal Genius" (trademark pending) gets her first job with SCOTUS.

But in this case, it looks like a quid pro quo, but hey, what do I know?

I know we are heading for a Constitutional Crisis.

I also know those clerks get emails, with pre-written, private, foreign interest opinions for the Justices to use.

Kavanaugh defender Amy Chua's daughter gets Supreme Court job with Kavanaugh

Amy Chua and Brett Kavanaugh

Three days after President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh as his pick for the Supreme Court, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Amy Chua, a Yale Law professor better known as the author of the 2011 parenting memoir “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” who praised Kavanaugh as a mentor to young women.

Chua, a member of the school’s clerkships committee, had placed eight women with Kavanaugh, including her daughter Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, who had been accepted to serve with Kavanaugh, then a circuit court judge.

Some critics called the op-ed self-serving, arguing that Chua was simply setting her daughter up for a Supreme Court clerkship once Kavanaugh was confirmed.

On Monday, the Supreme Court announced that Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld had been hired by Kavanaugh for a clerkship beginning in October.

On Monday, the Supreme Court announced that Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld had been hired by Kavanaugh for a clerkship beginning in October.

Neither Chua nor her daughter responded to requests from Yahoo News for comment.

Hired by Justice Kavanaugh for October Term 2019:

Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld (Yale 2018 / Grant)
Trenton Van Oss (Harvard 2017 / Grant)

First two #SCOTUS feeds by Judge Grant, both to her former boss. Congrats, Your Honor! #SCOTUS #AppellateTwitter

— Supreme Ambitions (@SCOTUSambitions) June 10, 2019

Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court in October following a bitterly divisive nomination fight that included allegations of misbehavior from multiple women, which he denied. During his confirmation hearing, Christine Blasey Ford testified that Kavanaugh had attempted to rape her at a party when they were teenagers.

While the Senate weighed those allegations, the Guardian first reported that Chua and her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, advised female students that it was “not an accident” that Kavanaugh’s female law clerks all “looked like models” and to project a “model-like” femininity if they wanted to clerk for him.

Chau denied the allegations.

"For the more than tec years I've known him, Judge Kavanaugh's first and only litmus test in hiring has been excellence," she said in a subsequent statement.  “As I wrote in the Wall Street Journal, he has also been an exceptional mentor to his female clerks. Among my proudest moments as a parent was the day I learned our daughter would join those ranks.” 

Rubenfeld himself was the subject of an internal investigation at Yale concerning allegations of inappropriate behavior with female students.

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