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Last month, we learned that Brett Kavanaugh was hiring Amy Chua’s daughter as a Supreme Court clerk. That came as no surprise to regular readers of Above the Law. It was, potentially, a surprise if you made the critical mistake of believing Amy Chua, who promised that Amy Chua’s op-ed defense of Kavanaugh had nothing at all to do with her daughter’s career prospects. It might have come as a surprise if you made the critical mistake of believing Amy Chua’s daughter, who assured people on Twitter that she would not be clerking for Kavanaugh “anytime soon” because of her Army commitments. But hopefully, you were neither ignorant nor gullible enough to believe either of those things.
But, Amy Chua was not the only person who led a spirited defense of the ethically challenged Kavanaugh after he was nominated to the Supreme Court. And it turns out, Amy Chua’s daughter is not the only person who will professionally benefit from “early adoption” of a man who would go on to be credibly accused of attempted rape. A tipster brought this to our attention:
ATL has already posted about Kavanaugh’s 2021-2022 hires, but with respect to one hire in particular, you might be interested in the unseemly fact that Kavanaugh hired Athie Livas, the very YLS student who spearheaded (and is listed as the very first name in the particularly vapid YLS pro-Kavanaugh open letter prior to his confirmation. It’s unusually convenient and blatantly un-meritocratic that many of Kavanaugh’s first clerk hires (Chua-Rubenfeld, and now Livas) appear to be quid pro quo exchanges for their public displays of support rendered during his confirmation.
To refresh your memory, here’s the referred to Kavanaugh support letter. You can pull it up on whitehouse.gov, because remember, these are the kinds of letters Trump and the Republicans used to defend Kavanaugh, who would later go on to have 83 ethics complaints lodged against him and then dismissed because nobody but Congress can hold a Supreme Court justice accountable. Here’s part of that letter, which is indeed “particularly vapid.”
Judge Kavanaugh is eminently qualified to serve as a Supreme Court justice. Judge Kavanaugh, a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, is one of our nation’s most distinguished jurists. In his twelve years of service on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, he has demonstrated a principled approach to interpreting the law. He has reached legal conclusions free of political partisanship. Judge Kavanaugh has devoted his professional life to upholding the rule of law and our Constitution.
The Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process is a stain upon Yale Law School. To be sure, it’s a stain upon the United States Senate — Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins especially — and a terrible reminder of what this country will let privileged white boys do to women. But Yale Law School’s reflexive support for this guy and defense of his career-long partisan hackery on the theory “he went to Yale, tho,” is really shameful.
Yale, I’m sure, would like people to forget its role, and there are a lot of people out there who would gladly oblige them. But they can’t get away from it, because Kavanaugh keeps handing out clerkships to Yale students who stood for him like he’s trying to quickly pay off some “baseball ticket” debt. The man is unethical to his core, and Yale students keeps benefiting from that.
In five years, in 10 years, Yale will get its wish. Kavanaugh will be a well-established nightmare, but most people will forget how Yale helped him get over. Most people will forget the name of Amy Chua’s daughter or this vapid Kavanaugh stan, and they will go on to have successful careers in law or politics. And maybe one day a future generation of Yale faculty will have the opportunity to shamelessly support their nominations to the federal bench. And the only person who will remember the ethically challenged way these two got their start will be me, only I’ll be old and washed-out and trying to shove “literature” in your hands as you wait at the crosswalk for the light to change.
But I will remember.
Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.