Posted on 09/21/2018 6:49:38 AM PDT by TigerClaws
The allegation made by Christine Blasey Ford — that at age 15 she was the victim of a sexual assault by a 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh — has not only upended Judge Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, but has also left Americans wondering what standards should apply to an accusation like this.
It’s natural to place this sort of accusation within a criminal-justice framework: the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt; the presumption of innocence; the right to confront and respond to an accuser. If Judge Kavanaugh stood criminally accused of attempted rape, all of that would apply with full force. But those concepts are a poor fit for Supreme Court confirmation hearings, where there’s no presumption of confirmation, and there’s certainly no burden that facts be established beyond a reasonable doubt.
What matters here isn’t law as much as politics — though not (or not just) partisan politics. Confirmation hearings are also about constitutional politics — the debate, involving both institutions of government and the polity, about what the Constitution means and requires.
So what standard should the Senate use in evaluating the claims made by Dr. Blasey and in deciding how they bear on Judge Kavanaugh’s fitness for a seat on the Supreme Court? The Senate’s approach to its constitutional “advice and consent” obligation has always depended on context. A number of factors matter: the timing of the vacancy; the justice being replaced; the nominee’s likely impact on the ideological makeup of the court; even the popularity of the president (very popular presidents have always had more leeway when it comes to picking justices). Then, of course, there’s the nominee.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Beyond a reasonable doubt. Which they are not even close to producing.
WHAT EVIDENCE?
Stronger than a ‘He said - she said’ and with multiple witnesses.............
The only available evidence in the Blowsy-Fraud allegations suggests that the allegations are entirely fabricated. She's lying.
Well.. to start with, the evidence should exist in the first place... which in this case it doesn’t.
Strong enough to convince any reasonable U.S. Senator that Kavanaugh isn’t qualified to sit on the Court. This isn’t a legal proceeding.
How about some evidence instead of zero ?
First we need evidence.
Forget all that.
It’s the Seriousness of the Charge.
How about providing some credible evidence that this might be plausible. That is not enough to derail someone’s life and career, but they haven’t even met this minimal standard.
Byron York
?Verified account @ByronYork
49m49 minutes ago
Just in case: In NYT, law professor argues Ford allegation against Kavanaugh doesn’t have to actually be true to disqualify him for SCOTUS. ‘Credible’ is good enough. ‘The existence of credible allegations against Judge Kavanaugh should be disqualifying
The accusation is enough.
Look at the Deep State ties of the accuser. Her dad was allegedly a cia bagman.
The reasonable and rational doubt is the detailed description of the house near the airport and the football player resident that resembles Brett.
Absent any believable testimony to the contrary, the mentioned facts are not only real and true but damning
It doesn’t take a very good nose to SMELL a Democrat stunt.
1. She's lying outright (most likely).
2. She's imagining something that never happened, but has convinced herself it did.
3. Something like that happened but the boy in question was someone else, not Kavanaugh.
Well, even Bill Clinton’s semen on a blue dress from a sexual act in the Oval Office with an intern during working hours was not enough evidence to uphold impeachment for Democrats, so the bar for evidence must be very high.
This whole thing is silly why would you disqualify him even if he did this when he was stumbling drunk as she described and he was 17 years old when he has led an exemplary life? Republicans should never have considered this disqualifying it’s a ridiculous teenage story from a party.
Well let’s see, if YOUR life and the lives of your family was about to be destroyed because someone recovered a 3 year old memory and then sat n it for another six, what standard would YOU want applied?
This is not a he said she said. They have a witness. He said it did not happen. She is not a witness. She can’t remember anything about the event. So there is no evidence that something happened. And every psychiatrist will tell you that repressed memories are very misleading and often faulty.
That is why the press is not talking to her. They are talking to the democrat party lawyers who accredit it to Ford. But Ford MIA.
No surprises in either the author’s conclusion, it the first dozen comments. It is the NYT, after all.
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