Feuding Letters at Yale Law Expose Divisions Over Supreme Court Nomination

In the days since President Trump’s nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Yale Law School — the judge’s alma mater — has become a hotbed of debate over the choice. The argument isn’t just about Kavanaugh’s positions and the impact of his nomination, but also about what the school should be saying about him.

Alexandra Brodsky was at a rally in Washington within hours of Trump’s announcement, surrounded by pro-choice signs and shouting phrases like “Stop Kavanaugh.” She was still there when she glanced down at her phone to see that her alma mater, Yale Law, had issued a news release acknowledging the nomination.

To Brodsky, a 2016 alumna, it was more than an acknowledgment. She read quotations from professors and from the dean, Heather Gerken, and thought the release was far too positive. She felt that the school had “praised” Kavanaugh, a 1990 alumnus, while ignoring his potential impact on the court and American jurisprudence.

That’s what led Brodsky, along with 20 to 30 other alumni, to draft a letter to Gerken, rebuking the institution for seeming to throw its support to Kavanaugh.

“We write today as Yale Law students, alumni, and educators ashamed of our alma mater,” the letter begins.

In 10 paragraphs, the letter condemns the school and lists reasons for concern over Kavanaugh’s nomination, referencing controversial cases in his legal career. Among other things, the letter mentions the perceived effect that Kavanaugh’s presence on the court would have on constraining abortion rights, and on permitting discrimination against gay people.

“Perhaps Judge Kavanaugh will be less likely to hire your favorite students,” the letter says. “But people will die if he is confirmed.” The letter concludes by asking the school to use its “authority and platform to expose the stakes of this moment and the threat that Judge Kavanaugh poses.”

Brodsky said she had been heartened by the support from individual faculty members who have spoken out publicly against the nomination. And the letter she helped draft had hundreds of signatures as of Thursday.

Competing Letter

But also on Thursday, another group of students and alumni of Yale Law released a competing letter — defending the school’s language in the news release and expressing support for Kavanaugh’s nomination.

“We are proud of Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination, and believe that his accomplishments and qualifications speak for themselves,” it says. “We admire the Yale Law faculty who have spoken in support of Judge Kavanaugh’s qualifications and commitment to the Constitution.”

This letter goes on to quote the professors and alumni in the original news release, and contains the signatures of more than 100 professors, alumni, and current students at Yale Law. The list of signatories continued to grow on Thursday.

In a statement, the school said its news release was nothing out of the ordinary: “Yale Law School is a nonpartisan institution. We routinely acknowledge high-profile nominations of our alumni. We did exactly the same thing not so long ago when Justice Sonia Sotomayor ‘79 received her nomination to the High Court.”

Colleges, of course, routinely brag about the accomplishments of prominent alumni, and several Yale Law professors told The Chronicle they saw nothing unusual about the news release.

But the competing letters have drawn considerable attention to Yale Law, among whose alumni are three current Supreme Court justices: Sotomayor, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel A. Alito.

What those who signed the first letter saw as Yale’s support for Kavanaugh is fundamentally contrary to the school’s values, they said.

“The praise was so outlandish, it was over the top,” said Gregg Gonsalves, an adjunct associate professor at the law school. “The praise was unmoored and unattached to any sort of admission that his views and his rulings have effects on people’s lives.”

Gonsalves spends most of his working hours as a professor of public health but felt compelled to sign the letter as a member of the Yale community and as a health professional. Yale Law should have looked past the opportunity to boast of a prominent alumnus, he said. “The university is not just a reputation machine. We’re supposed to instill a sense of values and morals and ethics.”

Another professor, David Singh Grewal, argued that the nomination should be pushed off until after the midterm elections, and that the law school’s quick response had been too rash.

“I signed the open letter to support my Yale Law School students and fellow alumni and colleagues who feel that our institution has acted too quickly to put its thumb on the scale for Judge Kavanaugh despite many serious concerns about his record,” said Grewal.

Brodsky said the law school had focused too much on its own reputation instead of on Kavanaugh’s. “The school prioritized its proximity to power before the good of the country,” she said. “We are not in a position to prioritize our own professional prestige, either as institutions or as individuals, when this nomination will truly threaten the real lives of real people.”

‘I Know of No One Actually Better’

Other Yale Law professors have openly voiced support for Kavanaugh. Akhil Reed Amar, who wrote an op-ed in The New York Times on Monday to argue that Kavanaugh is a superior candidate, was quoted in the school’s news release and took part in interviews with The National Law Journal and Fox News.

“He’s very distinguished, I think fair and open-minded and smart,” Amar said. “And I know of no one actually better that would be nominated by a Republican president — any Republican president — and approved by a Republican Senate.”

As for the letter opposing Kavanaugh’s nomination, “there are several people who signed the letter who are very dear friends of mine,” Amar said. “I do not share the view of the letter, and I don’t think the letter understands quite where we are in the process.”

Signatories of the pro-Kavanaugh letter include J.D. Vance, a 2013 alumnus and author of the best seller Hillbilly Elegy, and Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank.

Brodsky said the letter endorsing Kavanaugh is “unsurprising” but doesn’t change her opinion.

“Like Yale’s release, this letter does not grapple with the stakes of Kavanaugh’s nomination,” she said. “In fact, it in no way engages with his legal track record or the ways in which, as a justice, he would influence the court. As we write in our initial letter, credentials on their own are not enough for such an important position. I don’t care if Kavanaugh coaches his daughter’s basketball team. I care if my daughter won’t be able to have a safe, legal abortion because of him.”

Correction (7/13/2018, 10:27 a.m.): A previous version of this article mistakenly said Brodsky had stated that Yale should have cited controversial opinions by Kavanaugh. She instead said Yale should have highlighted the stakes of his nomination.