On Kavanaugh and Due Process
Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog
SINCE THIS IS SUCH A TEACHABLE MOMENT . . .
Allow me to ruffle a completely different set of feathers for a moment. What is being done to Brett Kavanaugh has been in fact absolutely appalling. Let no one conclude that I am in anyway trying to minimize what an atrocity this thing was, and which it remains.
Due process matters. Justice matters. Presumption of innocence matters. Centuries of jurisprudential tradition must not be ditched because a badly educated generation of Americans got themselves into a moral panic, or to use a more accurate phrase for it, got themselves into something of an immoral doodah. Apparently, when the mob outside the courtside is yelling something like social justice for all! that makes all the subsequent proceedings okay.
But there is a deeper cultural reason why we have been treated to this spectacle of one of the most respected judges in the county being given the full treatment. This could not have happened unless our respect for due process had been eroding across the board for decades—but no national outcry over it because it is being done to the little guy. I am talking about the absence of real due process in things like asset forfeitures, Kelo-like eminent domain seizures, the administrative courts of the regulative state, big data surveillance, and a bunch of other legal atrocities.
I was contented enough with the Kavanaugh nomination because I believe he will be reliably far more conservative than Anthony Kennedy. And I believe that his presence on the bench will present a serious threat to Roe, which is the issue of our time.
That said, Kavanaugh wouldn’t have been my first pick for the Court.
Showing posts with label Due Process. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Due Process. Show all posts
Thursday, 4 October 2018
Wednesday, 26 July 2017
Pushback
Trump’s Education Department Takes on the Campus-Rape Lie
By David French
National Review Online
Last week, while the most in the media fixed their eyes on Donald Trump Jr., far-left activists geared up for a different kind of assault on the Trump administration: a full-court press to maintain a series of unlawful Obama-era policies that have stripped young men of their constitutional rights, ruined lives, and fostered politically correct (but factually challenged) hysteria on campuses from coast to coast. At issue is the Obama administration’s April 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter, a document that skipped the legally mandated regulatory rulemaking process to require colleges to adjudicate campus sexual-assault cases under a “preponderance of the evidence” standard without also securing adequate due-process rights for the accused.
Why do such a thing? Because campus activists (and Obama-administration allies) were convinced that colleges were in the middle of a “rape crisis.” Shoddy studies conducted with expansive definitions of sexual assault convinced the Left that an astounding 20 percent of college women are assaulted during their campus years, rendering the university a virtual war zone for women. It’s a rate that contradicts Bureau of Justice statistics showing that women are safer on campus than off, and that the real rate of sexual violence on campus isn’t one in five but closer to 6.1 per 1,000, a number that had been trending downward for 14 years as of 2013, the last year covered in the BJS report.
But no matter, the fake crisis demanded extreme measures, and the result was a series of federally mandated kangaroo courts. The goal was to create a summary procedure that permitted wronged women to safely and easily report their abusers and remove them from campus. The actual result was that poorly trained campus officials stepped into a miasma of drunken hookups and broken hearts. By 2016, colleges were buffeted from two directions — by an activist Democratic administration that demanded ever-more-decisive actions to address the alleged “crisis” and by mushrooming lawsuits brought by aggrieved male students, young men who were often forced off campus on the flimsiest of charges.
Last week, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos signaled that help — or at least due process — was on the way.
Will it have the will to restore due process for the accused?
By David French
National Review Online
Last week, while the most in the media fixed their eyes on Donald Trump Jr., far-left activists geared up for a different kind of assault on the Trump administration: a full-court press to maintain a series of unlawful Obama-era policies that have stripped young men of their constitutional rights, ruined lives, and fostered politically correct (but factually challenged) hysteria on campuses from coast to coast. At issue is the Obama administration’s April 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter, a document that skipped the legally mandated regulatory rulemaking process to require colleges to adjudicate campus sexual-assault cases under a “preponderance of the evidence” standard without also securing adequate due-process rights for the accused.
Why do such a thing? Because campus activists (and Obama-administration allies) were convinced that colleges were in the middle of a “rape crisis.” Shoddy studies conducted with expansive definitions of sexual assault convinced the Left that an astounding 20 percent of college women are assaulted during their campus years, rendering the university a virtual war zone for women. It’s a rate that contradicts Bureau of Justice statistics showing that women are safer on campus than off, and that the real rate of sexual violence on campus isn’t one in five but closer to 6.1 per 1,000, a number that had been trending downward for 14 years as of 2013, the last year covered in the BJS report.
But no matter, the fake crisis demanded extreme measures, and the result was a series of federally mandated kangaroo courts. The goal was to create a summary procedure that permitted wronged women to safely and easily report their abusers and remove them from campus. The actual result was that poorly trained campus officials stepped into a miasma of drunken hookups and broken hearts. By 2016, colleges were buffeted from two directions — by an activist Democratic administration that demanded ever-more-decisive actions to address the alleged “crisis” and by mushrooming lawsuits brought by aggrieved male students, young men who were often forced off campus on the flimsiest of charges.
Last week, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos signaled that help — or at least due process — was on the way.
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