Brett Kavanaugh – in both appearance and essence – is a dangerous fish. A mako shark, to be precise. Not because he interrogates with vigor and valor, but because he actively sharks. Let me explain by way of an example. He sharked Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson during her first line of questioning. Call it rude, call it whatever. But KBJ—for now—is a mere guppy in a dangerous pool of cold-blooded ocean predators. It’s really nothing personal in the animal kingdom. The big fish eats the small fish. That’s just how it goes.
Kavanaugh’s zoological tendencies are not his fault. That is simply the way of the robed god-kings. This past week, I traveled to Washington to attend the Supreme Court oral arguments for the Affirmative Action Cases involving Harvard and UNC. I sat next to a nice lady who worked for another publication—I think it was the New York Times. But my head was still spinning from one too many Manhattans at the Spee the night before that it might as well have been Mary Todd Lincoln.
The mystery woman told me that the Supreme Court is a hierarchy-obsessed psychological game: a farce. These nine apex predators of the American legal trophic pyramid couch their wildest fantasies in “legal precedent” and “baroque Tort law.” And as committed patriots, we lay back, close our eyes, and think of England.
The late Antonin Scalia had an unshakeable belief in natural law and the original intent of the Founders. But I realized, sitting there, breathing the same air as the robed god-kings, there is no real natural law — only the law of the jungle. The only natural thing in this environment are the appetites of the id. The superego is a veneer, a sham, a fig leaf. It’s all about the id, the will to power.
I’m afraid Dobbs did not satisfy these mako sharks-that-made-it: if that was the happy hour Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac, then Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard is surely a fitting cigarette.
Stay tuned for the 11.10 issue for a full, first hand account of Steinbaum’s experience at the Supreme Court.
Charles Steinbaum ’24 (insert email) writes Forum for The Independent.