Courts

ASSLaw Adds Assprof

Brett Kavanaugh has a new job that's not so much a job as an "excuse to give him a paycheck to go on vacation."

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(Photo by Andrew Harnik-Pool/Getty Images)

As Mark Joseph Stern points out, on September 27, 2018, Brett Kavanaugh declared of the accusations that the Senate shoved their heads in the sand rather than, “I may never be able to teach again.” It was certainly a poignant reminder that life can be tough for people with lifetime appointments to the most prestigious jobs in the country. How could he ever go on without being able to do the really important academic work that he devotes at least a couple hours a year toward?

As it turns out, Kavanaugh’s fears were unfounded and/or cynically concocted to distract from all the sexual assaulting. In a sign of how disturbingly short people think our memories are, less than a year later Brett Kavanaugh is teaching again. Or, more accurately, collecting a hefty check to do whatever George Mason’s “Antonin Scalia School of Law” pretends is a legal education:

Kavanaugh will co-teach a two-credit summer course in England from July through August. The class, titled “Creation of the Constitution,” focuses on “the origins and creation of the U.S. Constitution just outside of London in Runnymede, England, the location of the sealing of the Magna Carta,” according to the Scalia Law School.

That certainly sounds like the core curriculum and not a thinly veiled European retreat indirectly funded by the shadowy ideologue who pumps money into that tire fire and certainly has no business before the Court — directly or indirectly — that would make financing such a vacation a tawdry enterprise! Because that’s the situation at ASSLaw, where the school has already admitted the donations from the Kochs and another mystery source violate accepted academic standards and give outside quasi-think tanks input on faculty decisions.

Note, Kavanaugh’s Harvard Law class was a seminar on modern Supreme Court jurisprudence, something that a former Supreme Court clerk and current appellate judge would have unique insights into. Now he’s teaching a history course where he’s mostly qualified to lecture, “hey isn’t it cool they drive on the other side of the road here?” The legal academy has a bad enough rap running its scholarship through 2Ls as opposed to traditional peer-reviewed journals, but to pretend this jackhole can offer anything scholarly about the Angevin era that he didn’t read off the back of a national park marker is just insulting to the discipline of history.

That’s probably why it’s being “co” taught. Actually, maybe we should put “taught” in quotes too.

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And he’s not the only justice teaching at ASSLaw this summer!

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was confirmed in April 2017 to take over the late Scalia’s Supreme Court seat, will also co-teach a summer class in Padua, Italy, “about the historical roots and the modern application of the separation of powers in the national security context.”

Good lord. Italy.

Justice Kavanaugh to join faculty at George Mason’s Scalia Law School [Politico]
Brett Kavanaugh Hired as Professor at Antonin Scalia Law School [Fourth Estate]

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HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior 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. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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