A few years ago, as she was prepping to interview for a judicial clerkship, a student at Yale Law School received a troubling combination of warning and advice from her professors about one federal judge in particular: Brett Kavanaugh, she was told, liked his female clerks to have a “certain look.”
Right now Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court hangs in the balance as he faces an accusation that he sexually assaulted a girl in high school.
The professors proffering the advice are themselves well-known. Both Jed Rubenfeld and his wife, Amy Chua, author of the controversial 2011 book The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, told this woman about Kavanaugh’s preferences. Then, Kavanaugh was simply known as a prestigious judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Though neither said the judge did anything untoward regarding the women he worked with, the student found their counsel off-putting.
“I had mixed feelings,” said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous due to privacy concerns. “On the one hand, it’s a yellow flag; on the other hand, phew, I hadn’t heard anything else.”
Her first inkling that there might be issues with Kavanaugh came from Rubenfeld in a conversation about various judges with whom she might work.
Rubenfeld took care to warn her about two judges in particular: First, Alex Kozinski, then a judge on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, was known to sexually harass his clerks, he told her. (Kozinski retired in December amid accusations of harassment.)
The other was Kavanaugh. Though the judge was known to hire female clerks who had a “certain look,” Rubenfeld told her, he emphasized that he had heard nothing else untoward.
