Judging Brett Kavanaugh
What happened 30 years ago is important, but not enough attention is being paid to the kind of person he is now
Judge Brett Kavanaugh is accused of a sexual assault committed more than 30 years ago. His accuser is 100 per cent certain he did it. He claims to be 100 per cent certain he did not. What is alleged could be corroborated or not and the FBI could discover some damning information about the judge or not. Regardless, there are other factors that should be considered before deciding on his suitability to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
More than 30 years ago the judge was 17 years of age. By his own admission at the time he liked his beer and at times drank to an excess. (New reports are surfacing suggesting he did not tell the truth under oath about the extent of his drinking, which does throw his overall credibility into question.)
What he does not say, but what is well known, is that the human brain is not fully developed until approximately age 25. As we know all too well from personal experience, including the troublesome misbehaviour of our teenage children, mixing alcohol, any amount, with a partially developed brain is not a good recipe and often can be the cause of serious bad behaviour. We also know that cognitive development (moral reasoning) is far from complete at age 17 and that the same can be said of emotional intelligence.
Whether Judge Kavanaugh did what is being alleged clearly is relevant to the story, and there is no question that his accuser continues to suffer from the trauma of it. However, it should not be the only relevant factor to the Senate Judiciary Committee. As an assumedly highly informed group charged with a critically important task, the focus of their deliberations needs to be now as well as then. There has been too little focus on what has happened to Brett Kavanaugh since that time and his current state.
Assuming that the physiological growth of his brain was not impeded and its natural decline has been very gradual, has Judge Kavanaugh’s cognitive development (moral reasoning) and emotional intelligence also evolved? Instead of a further FBI investigation it would be more informative to know what results the judge would produce now on a comprehensive moral development assessment interview and on a standardized emotional intelligence questionnaire. The two are very different from his cognitive intellect (IQ) about which there is no question.
Even without the informative benefits of the standardized tests the judge’s character has not been stellar. He presents as barely advanced from the hedonistic perspective of his youth. He presents as if stuck at the reference group, tribal, perspective at which the focus is on subscribing to group beliefs, values and behaviours. This is a long way from the principled objectivity expected of a judge. Based on his defiant, enraged behaviour at the hearings, it would not be unreasonable to conclude his emotional intelligence also is barely better than it was. This too is far from what is expected of a judge.
It is a travesty that majority support from a particular political ideology defines the suitability of a candidate for the Supreme Court. It is a greater travesty that most people do not understand what constitutes being a principled person, let alone know how to look for one.