What Happened In The Brett Kavanaugh Hearing

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Basically, this is talking about research on the unreliability of eyewitness memory. And there is a pretty big body of evidence suggesting that our memories get corrupted over time, can be corrupted further by police investigation processes, aren’t always great indicators of objective fact, and are also likely to come out of an interrogation less accurate than they went in.

I’ve been doing some background reading on this, but I’m not sure I can weigh in in a comprehensive way just this moment, largely because a lot of the studies on this aren’t super consistent with the case at hand. Studies are often looking at witness ability to pick an assailant out of a lineup, for instance. And there are ways those specific environments can corrupt memory that wouldn’t really apply here. Other research is about two people remembering the same sexual encounter differently — one as consensual and one not. That also might not be exactly applicable. So I’d like to do more research into this before I really answer. But I will say this, if we’re talking about the unreliability of eyewitness memory, that effect would certainly apply to Kavanaugh’s testimony about these events, as well.

Mitchell looks like she is now moving toward a more direct, adversarial series of questions of Ford. Ford looks like she senses that.

Like Nate, I’ve been wondering exactly why so many Senate Republicans appear to be doubling down on Kavanaugh when there are so many potential conservative justices out there. The midterms loom large, even if the odds of the Democrats winning control of the Senate are low. But, and I think I might be sort of stealing this point from Nate on last week’s podcast: What is the strategy for Senate Republicans if they are still in control in their own chamber and there’s been a “wave” election in the House that favors Democrats?

It’s not a question with an obvious answer. We got a good sense in 2016 of what Senate Republicans think about confirming a Supreme Court justice in an election year, but what about after? It makes sense, given the stakes of a court appointment, for each party to fight hard for their nominees and their positions. But it’s clear that the legitimacy of the Supreme Court has been hanging in the balance for some time now.