Thread by @fawfulfan

This is certainly a moral flaw in Kavanaugh, but it's also a deeper flaw in our entire standard for who should be appointed to federal courts.

We overvalue prestigiousness of credentials and undervalue real world experience.

https://twitter.com/jonathanalter/status/1037140984633667585

I'd happily accept more judges on the federal bench whose law degrees aren't Ivy League and who didn't clerk for the existing Washington judges, but who, say, ran a nonprofit for battered women, or served as a public defender in a rural place a million miles from anywhere.

I want more federal judges who have had to deal with true hardship and problems in their lives, or at the very least, who have spent a good portion of their careers helping those who do.

People who have been on the end of the failures of our social, political, and legal systems.

Even leaving aside all of Kavanaugh's legal views that I disagree with, what does he actually *add* to the court?

Yes, he's qualified. He's smart. But what in the human condition has he experienced that would give him a perspective the Court couldn't already consider?

This is the real crime of the movement to stack the court with identical conservatives. No room for diversity of experience or worldview or opinion.

In which case why even have 9 justices at all? What is the point of them deliberating and voting?

To me, the fact that Kavanaugh wouldn't shake the hand of a gun victim's father symbolizes so much more than simple rudeness or arrogance.

It symbolizes that he has a stunted view of parts of humanity that don't affect him and he isn't interested in expanding that view.

It signifies to me that Kavanaugh could not empathize with anyone who does not run in his circles. Which is most of the American people.

Heaven help anyone poorer than him, or a different skin color or a woman, who has to make heir case to him and any court he sits on.