LogFAQs > #909141145

Quick question for you, TC, that might put this in perspective.

Were you just as skeptical of the people coming forward to allege sexual abuse committed by the Catholic priests 30, 40, sometimes 50+ years ago? Did you think it was odd that all of them started coming forwards at the same time (and not, y'know, people finally deciding to come to terms with a horrible past because it kept popping up in the news)? Were they also sitting on these allegations for decades, waiting until "the perfect time" to maximize the damage?

Or is this different somehow?

GreenKnight127 posted...

A man is innocent until proven guilty afterall....right? Due process IS a constitutional right.....right?

Sure, and no one's suggesting we lock up Kavanaugh without an investigation and trial.

Here's the thing, though - that constitutional right? That's meant to preserve your freedom from incarceration - nothing else. Kavanaugh isn't constitutionally entitled to a seat on the Supreme Court and there's no moral obligation that we have to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that he's guilty before saying "Wait, whoa, maybe we should look into this a bit more". It's the same way Bill Cosby's various sponsors could drop him long before he was ever charged with or convicted of anything.

A lot of people get confused by this - they assume that "innocent until proven guilty" is a universal standard (it's not, not even within the legal system - civil law, for instance, usually operates off of "balance of probabilities", rather than "beyond reasonable doubt") and that it means that you are free from all consequence until a criminal conviction is obtained. Again, even restricting ourselves to the criminal system, this is not the case - if you're accused of murder, for instance, you're probably going to be spending all of your time before and during the trial behind bars, even though you haven't been convicted of anything yet. You'll also probably lose your job. People generally accept that this is a reasonable reaction, rather than letting accused murderers wander freely until the court gets around to trying their case.

This is all without even touching on the fact that spurious allegations are rare in criminal cases (<10%) and even rarer in sexual assault allegations (<5%).

And here we're talking about something that should have an even higher standard - a lifetime appointment to one of the most powerful offices in the country. There's nothing incongruous or wrong with saying "You have to prove your innocence before we reward you with this position" in this instance. And, again, there's nothing wrong with saying "Let's pause this confirmation until we have the full story and can decide with the full set of facts in front of us." After all, there's no timetable for when the seat has to be filled beyond the one artificially set by the Republicans in the senate. And pardon me if I don't have much sympathy for the Senators who are crying soft tears while screaming about delay tactics and abuse of process, with the hope of getting their nominee confirmed a few months before an election, when those exact same senators not two years ago let Scalia's seat sit empty for almost a full year, without even holding a hearing for Merrick Garland, with the excuse that "the American people should get to decide on this".
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