Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Supreme Court of the United States
Abstract
Should the United States Senate allow judicial nominees who have been credibly accused of sexual misconduct to be seated on the Supreme Court? How should we handle these allegations when they arise during the vetting process? Despite the importance of these questions, lawmakers have failed to address them.
The contentious Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991 featured testimony from Professor Anita Hill and did much to raise Americans’ awareness about the prevalence of sexual misconduct in the workplace. Although Professor Hill subsequently called for the Senate to implement a process for addressing future sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominees, her calls have gone unheeded. Twenty-seven years later, Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings again placed the issue of sexual misconduct squarely before the Senate. Despite these fraught events, we are still waiting for the Senate to embrace Professor Hill’s challenge to create a suitable process for addressing sexual misconduct allegations made against Supreme Court nominees.
This Article uses the Thomas and Kavanaugh hearings to explore what the absence of such a process has cost us and why reform is necessary. The Article offers a model for reform based upon sexual assault investigation best practices. It also proposes a standard for use in evaluating sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominees—what I term the Innocence Standard. Under this standard, successful SCOTUS nominees must be innocent beyond a reasonable doubt of any sexual misconduct.
Recommended Citation
AVALOS, LISA, "The Innocence Standard: Supreme Court Nominees and Sexual Misconduct" (2024). Connecticut Law Review. 591.
https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/law_review/591