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In a prologue to their 1994 book "The Strange Justice: The Sale of Clarence Thomas," reporters Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson wrote that "the unresolved conflict" remained between Thomas, conservative justice and Anita Hill, professor of law. that he had sexually harassed her ten years earlier.
"Rather than choke, their confrontation has become an active fight in the American cultural wars," commented reporters at the Battle of the Appointment, which elevated Thomas to the country's highest court in 1991. That has been reduced to symbols and caricatures – to strike at the heart of American politics.
Nearly three decades later, as the Senate was preparing to vote on another Supreme Court nomination, a competition was emerging alongside the controversy between Thomas and Hill. A sexual assault charge was laid against Brett M. Kavanaugh, a candidate proposed by President Trump, himself accused of sexual misconduct. The three Republicans – Thomas, Kavanaugh, Trump, who are different in terms of background and temperament – deny the accusations.
A year after the #MeToo movement, the dispute over Kavanaugh's appointment could test the evolution of cultural wars and what the country has learned since 1991, whose convulsive events gave the label its "Year of the Woman" label in 1992 ". the historic number of women who joined the public service that year, in a mass political mobilization, found resonance in 2018.
"I was motivated to run for the Senate after witnessing the awful way that Anita Hill was treated by a male-only judicial panel, interrogating her about sexual harassment that she had." She suffered at the hands of the current Judge Clarence Thomas. Washington, a member of the Democratic leadership, said in a statement Sunday.
Murray asked his colleagues to "treat this survivor with empathy and humanity and to ensure that the US Senate in 2018 does not send the signal sent to millions of women in 1991 who feared to speak, and watched on television as someone very similar to them was attacked and defamed. "
Kavanaugh's nomination was already heavy. Democrats are still outraged by the Senate Republicans' refusal to consider President Barack Obama's appointment of Merrick Garland in the spring of 2016. They denounced the retention of thousands of pages of documents detailing Kavanaugh's involvement in battles. policies. W. Bush White House.
The revelation this weekend that Kavanaugh is charged with sexual assault will broaden the meaning of his appointment beyond the judicial system. It's now also a fight for the #MeToo movement and the rules for judging misconduct complaints in an extremely partisan arena.
"Are we convinced that women lie or listen respectfully and take their demands seriously?" Said Sally Goldfarb, a law professor at Rutgers University. "I hope that the current allegations against Judge Kavanaugh will be treated differently from the outrageous way in which the allegations of Anita Hill were addressed in 1991."
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Nixon White House lawyer John Dean reprimanded the majority for concealing Kavanaugh's information materials, citing the eleventh-hour revelations of Thomas's past. .
"Because Justice Thomas has not been fully controlled, his court career has been under a cloud," Dean said. "Thomas's sincerity with Professor Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment has never been fully resolved."
Crucial factors link the allegations against Kavanaugh with those made against Thomas on the eve of his engagement in 1991. The two women wanted to remain anonymous. The two episodes would have occurred in the early 1980s. But the two cases also diverge significantly, including the fact that only a decade elapsed between the alleged sexual harassment of Thomas by Thomas and his installation on the court against three decades between Kavanaugh's alleged behavior and his confirmation process.
[California professor, writer of confidential Brett Kavanaugh letter, speaks out about her allegation of sexual assault]
As the Washington Post revealed on Sunday, a California researcher, Christine Blasey Ford, accused Kavanaugh, a judge of the Columbia District Court of Appeal, of sexually assaulting her at age 17 and was 15 years old. On the summer night in the early 1980s, she claims that Kavanaugh stuck her in and tried to take off her clothes, placing her hand on her mouth when she tried to scream.
"I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do it in high school or at any time, "Kavanaugh said in a statement released by the White House last week, when aspects of Ford's account are appeared.
Ford did not intend to make itself known, but when the details of the letter she had sent to Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the highest democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, had been unveiled last week, she had decided that her "civic responsibility" was afraid of reprisals. The alleged episode, although many years in the past, had a psychological impact on her, which she articulated for the first time during the couple's therapy in 2012, as Emma Brown of The Post.
The Judiciary Committee was to vote Thursday on the appointment of Kavanaugh, a schedule that can now be questioned, with several GOP Senators joining the Democrats to say that Ford should be heard. Her lawyer said Monday that she would be ready to testify.
Hill was heard before the Judiciary Committee, but under circumstances that she claims to have been designed to discredit her. At the time of her testimony, she was a professor of law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law.
In the early 1980s, she worked at Thomas, first at the Civil Rights Bureau of the Department of Education and then at the Equal Opportunities Commission in the area of employment. During this period, she alleged, Thomas repeatedly asked her out, ignoring her refusals, and attempted to engage in a conversation about pornographic films and her sexual prowess.
In a statement to the committee in October 1991, Hill recounted how she "was beginning to feel a lot of stress at work," fearing that Thomas "would take away her anger" by pretending to be a duty or sending her away.
The FBI had investigated his claims the previous month and reported to the committee how much the lawmakers have divided 7-7 on the nomination proposed by President George W. Buisson. Then, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, the best Democrat on the committee, joined six Republicans to support Thomas. No mention of Hill's accusations was made at the public meeting.
As the group's work was apparently over, the plenary debate started early the following month. But on October 6, 1991, NPR and Newsday announced the news of Hill's allegations.
"Here is a person who is charged with protecting the rights of women and other groups in the workplace, and he is using his strong position for his own benefit, for one thing," Hill told Nina Totenberg of NPR. . "And he did it in a very, simply ugly and intimidating way."
Thomas denied the allegations, and when the committee's hearings were reopened on October 11, Circuit Judge DC and the Yale Law School graduate – a pedigree shared by Kavanaugh – described the debates as "high-tech lynching for blacks think for themselves, do for themselves, have different ideas.
Hill, a Yale law graduate who grew up on an Oklahoma farm, spoke after him, explaining that she "may have been discerning" by adopting "militant measures."
She recounted how she had tried to preserve her privacy, unwilling to come forward when Senate staff approached her about Thomas's appointment. Finally, she felt that she had a "duty to report," she said.
The all white members of the committee, all white, questioned his credibility and blamed him for the disturbing details of his account. At one point, Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania announced that the FBI report "did not mention any mention of the private parts of Judge Thomas, his sexual prowess, or the size of his private parts."
"With the traditions of the Senate and the committee, Biden thought that he was going to conduct an audition, but the Republicans knew – led by Arlen Specter – that they were going to conduct a lawsuit," said Barbara A. Mikulski, a Democratic Maryland congressman at the time, in a mail-run oral history with the small group of Hill Congress supporters. "And Professor Hill would be the one on trial."
Biden refused to allow the public testimony of a number of witnesses who supported Hill's version of events. The Delaware senator made "a disservice to me, a bigger service to the public," Hill said in a 2014 interview with the Huffington Post.
"I wish I could do more for Anita Hill," Biden told Teen Vogue last year. "I owe him an apology." The former vice president and prospective presidential candidate of 2020 finally voted against Thomas when the judge was confirmed, 52-48, on October 15, 1991.
Hill, who did not send an e-mail on Sunday night for comment, told Politico through a spokesman last week that the government needed to find a fair and neutral way to investigate. on complaints. "
"I have seen first-hand what happens when such a process is armed against an accuser, and no one should be subjected to it again," added Hill, who is now a professor at Brandeis University.
The alleged wrongs are different. The age of the candidates at the time of the alleged wrongdoings is different.
Similarly, the composition of the Judiciary Committee is different, but not very clear. Of its 21 members, four are women, all democrats. Among them is Senator Kamala D. Harris of California, who sent a message Sunday at the top of her Twitter page calling for a "thorough investigation" before a vote on the appointment. But the Senate is controlled by Republicans, while Democrats held legislative power in 1991.
Kavanaugh emphasized his support for young women lawyers, saying in his opening statement to the Judiciary Committee that he was "proud that the majority of my legal assistants are women". Republicans also recalled the judge's support among women. On Friday, Iowa Senator Charles E. Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, circulated a letter from 65 women who claim to have known the candidate in high school, guaranteeing his character.
Last month, Lisa Blatt, a self-proclaimed "feminist liberal advocate," presented Politican with his case for Kavanaugh. "Kavanaugh is a mentor for women," proclaimed Amy Chua of Yale Law School, writing in the Wall Street Journal that there was "no judge" there, she would trust more to guide the training of his own daughter. No woman returned an email requesting a comment Sunday night.
In his 1994 account of Thomas' appointment, "Resurrection: The Confirmation of Clarence Thomas," former Senator John Danforth (R-Mo.), Which the judge attributes to his legal career, quotes Thomas as saying In his auditions.
"And by following these rules, the country has never seen the real person," Thomas said, according to Danforth. "There is an inherent dishonesty in the system."
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