In the wake of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation and swearing in as the newest associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court at a subsequent private ceremony, journalist Ashley Feinberg was among those who returned to his charged testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, September 27 when she declared Saturday afternoon: “I just keep thinking about [his] sneering ‘what goes around comes around.'”
Those words by Kavanaugh were delivered as part of a snearing counter-attack aimed at Democratic members of the committee and the wider American public viewing the hearing on televisions nationwide. In part, it looked like this:
But while the overtly partisan remarks and the manner with which he delivered them led many to the conclusion that Kavanaugh did not have the “judicial temperament” to sit on the nation’s highest court, author and journalist Naomi Klein posited that it is more important than ever to understand that moment and recognize the profound ramifications it will have going forward now that Justice Kavanaugh is a reality.
As Feinberg’s colleague at the Huffington Post, Paul Blumenthal, points out—in a piece titled, “The Coming Kavanaugh Court Doctrine: Democrats Are Unconstitutional“—the threat of “what goes around comes around” could have serious implications for “cases that help Republicans and harm Democrats” in the future.
“Essentially what he did is he took his mask off and he revealed himself as a politician who wears a robe,” Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor, told Blumenthal.
Meanwhile, in her online thread composed on Saturday, Klein argued that the “snarl” Kanavaugh offered during his confirmation hearing is only a taste of what’s to come:
A thread about Kavanaugh on this dark day: No matter what happens next, we have to remember his snarl. Engrave it into our collective hippocampus.
— Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) October 6, 2018
This article originally posted here.
