Law Schools

Law School Professor Says Dr. Ford 'Should Have Held Her Tongue' In Latest Embarrassment To Her School

Amy Wax is back and as hilariously wacko as ever.

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Christine Blasey Ford (Photo by MICHAEL REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images)

It’s perfectly acceptable to not believe Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony. You’d be wrong — demonstrating a profound level of myopia in believing only the self-serving testimony of a guy repeatedly caught lying under oath — but at least it’s a stance one can take without revealing yourself a monster. Unfortunately, many conservatives have ratcheted themselves down to a new low: most would support Kavanaugh’s confirmation if the allegations were true.

What kind of person would jump past “not believing her” and into the nether realm of excusing sexual assault? For that, we look no further than Penn Law School’s Amy Wax, who continues her crusade to embarrass and undermine her employer by taking to the media to beat the drum that even if Ford was assaulted it shouldn’t matter. Indeed, not only shouldn’t it matter, Ford should be castigated as a bad person for merely suggesting that her assault could matter. It’s a bravura performance from America’s saddest law professor.

Without further ado:

That is some pure, uncut batshit right there! If you can’t watch the video, let’s break down the transcript of this exchange:

I think it’s a stale allegation, I think it violates principles of basic fair play for her to be bringing this up, I think she should have held her tongue, if I were her I would have, I think basic dignity and fairness dictates that, you know, it’s too late, Ms. Ford, even if there would have been consequences to bitching about it at the time, so there’s that.

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It’s funny, because I’d have thought basic dignity would preclude describing sexual assault victims as “bitching about it,” but that’s just me. Wax has explicitly said that using coarse language in public is the sign of moral bankruptcy and in this specific instance, she seems to have a point. By the way, note that she’s not talking about a “stale allegation” as a bar to believability. That fading memories and the degradation of physical evidence should bar criminal allegations — even though this is absolutely not a criminal case — is a defensible position. It’s hard to imagine that Dr. Ford would mistake her assailant given that he was personally known to her — no matter what Zillow might say — but if someone points to an incident from three decades past and argues that this fact introduces some unreliability, that’s a contention we can weigh out. However, Wax is going to a whole other level and arguing that its being “stale” means an old sexual assault should matter even if totally true. This is pretty far afield of the balanced criminal defense attorney tack.

When people accuse Wax of extolling a deeply misogynist, ultimately white supremacist worldview, this is exactly what they’re talking about. In the op-ed that made her infamous, written with USD Law’s Larry Alexander, she railed — with scarcely a nod toward any evidence — that America owes its decline to a society that excuses criminality. To solve the “crisis” in America, it must return to a world where people face real consequences for their actions. She had strong words for substance abuse and “inner city” violence. But when called upon to hold an affluent white male to account… well, that’s just not the kind of crime that Wax has mind.

But even if he did it, 17 years old, we now are saying that a man is going to pay for the rest of his life for a momentary act of, you know, recklessness, which didn’t leave any permanent, you know, didn’t create any permanent harm, except through this manufactured idea that this is such a horrible, traumatic thing — it’s not a good thing, but honestly, you know? The woman is not going to recover from that? And his whole life now is ruined.

“The woman is not going to recover from that?” One struggles to find the brightline in Wax’s formulation. How much “recovery” does it take to excuse liability? Should physically battered people just “rub some dirt on it”? After all, they’ll “recover” eventually. For a woman who makes a career out of spouting intellectually bankrupt nonsense, this is a uniquely dubious argument.

At least until the very next sentence. If he is denied a Supreme Court seat, he returns to a lifetime appointment to one of the most coveted jobs in the legal profession. To borrow from another: it’s not a good thing, but honestly, you know? The man is not going to recover from that?

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Professor Wax’s central argument for the last few years is that we must stop a culture that lets children run rampant without proper discipline. But, for this 17-year-old, that standard doesn’t seem to matter. It’s “momentary recklessness” even though until this very instant, “momentary recklessness” was exactly the sort of excuse-making that she decried as eroding our “bourgeois values” in a torrent of “permissiveness.” On paper, it’s a stunning breakdown of intellectual consistency for someone supposedly all about accountability.

That misunderstands the record. Consistency requires a moral core, a bedrock principle that guides everything else. Some people, to their folly, thought “accountability” shaped Wax’s worldview. But when you figure out what’s really sitting at Wax’s moral core, she’s entirely consistent.

Earlier: Law Professors Say White ’50s Culture Is Superior, Other Racist Stuff
Penn Law School Prof Amy Wax Stumbles Into A Truth… Before Delving Back Into Vile Conspiracy Theories
Amy Wax Relieved Of Her 1L Teaching Duties After Bald-Faced Lying About Black Students
Professor Declares Black Students ‘Rarely’ Graduate In The Top Half Of Law School Class
Dog Whistling ‘Bourgeois Values’ Op-Ed Gets Thorough Takedown From Other Law Professors
Law Students Seek To Ban Professor From Teaching 1Ls

HeadshotJoe Patrice is an editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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