Sarah French Russell is in a fix. The tenured Quinnipiac law professor won a big prize, a nomination to a federal district judgeship for Connecticut. Russell’s calamitous Nov. 1 appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee may derail her.
Russell provided the committee with 4,700 pages of documents but she could not explain the 16 she left out. The committee found a 2020 letter she signed urging Gov. Ned Lamont to release thousands of inmates at the start of the pandemic and “declare a moratorium on incarceration” during it.
The screed declares prisons and jails “detrimental to human rights and disproportionately harm marginalized communities, including Black, brown, Indigenous and other communities of color; immigrants; people with mental illness; people with disabilities; people in the LGBTQ+ community; people who use drugs; people engaged in sex work and street economies; and people experiencing houselessness [sic] and poverty.”
The condemnation of the criminal justice system and the 10 demands that follow fill three pages. The 13 that follow are stuffed with the organizations and individuals who endorse the letter. Some of the organizations live on the far left of the fractious American political spectrum. Our freedom is our glory and the groups and people endorsing misbegotten proposals probably saw the approaching pandemic as finding political opportunity in a crisis.
When Russell was confronted with her signature on the letter, she said she had no recollection of it. Russell addressed its contents in a post-hearing explanation to the committee. “I did not write or edit the letter and, until my hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee,” she wrote, “I did not recall that my name had been listed as an ‘endorsing individual’—along with more than 1,500 others. Reviewing that letter today, I regret allowing my name to be added as the letter does not accurately reflect my views.” She calls the letter’s demands “overbroad.”
Once in a while, a hearing allows a nominee to display an essential virtue, bravery. Russell fled from that opportunity. In her post-hearing response, Russell failed to refresh her recollection and explain how her name appeared enduring views that suggest she wants to dismantle our system of justice and leave us at the mercy of potential violent criminals. Did she receive emails from the primary proponents of the letter? Were there text messages? Phone calls? She provides no explanation for her signature and appears not to have searched for one.
The committee’s questionnaire asks a nominee to list the last three books she has read. Russell’s trio includes Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.” The Yale College and Yale Law School graduate put that popular book to use in her post-hearing explanations — and failed.
Asked about a letter she signed opposing the 2018 nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court because he lacked the “temperament” to serve, Russell retreated. She didn’t wobble, she backpedaled. The letter, Russell points out, was signed by 2,400 law professors. “I did not write or edit the letter but added my name to it.” She is now informed by “a greater understanding of the nomination process and a deeper appreciation for the challenges of this process …” This is cowardly careerism on open display.
Russell and the other professors were right. Kavanaugh displayed appalling behavior during his confirmation hearing and it ought to have caused the Senate to reject his nomination. Russell diminishes herself by fleeing from her previous views in pursuit of a lifetime appointment.
In 2017, Russell joined 1,423 other law school faculty members in signing a letter opposing Senator Jeff Sessions’ nomination for Attorney General. She wrote to the committee that while she was a signatory — once again — she “did not write or edit” the letter. The letter emphasized that the Senate rejected Sessions for a federal judgeship and those concerns should guide the Senate in its assessment of his qualifications to be Attorney General.
The letter included concerns, Russell wrote, that “some” of the signatories had, once more attempting a cringe-inducing dodge from explaining views she may or not have held not so long ago. She declines to say if she was among the some concerned at Sessions’ support for building a wall along the nation’s southern border or his climate change skepticism. It is painful to see a law school professor debase herself in the pursuit of a judgeship by fleeing from her own views.
Russell misread Kondo’s advice. She has mistaken erasing for order.
So timorous is Russell that she declined even to say which Supreme Court Justice of the last 70 years had a philosophy most like hers. Her excuse was that she has not served as a judge and “has not researched the philosophies of the justices on the Warren, Burger, Rehnquist, and Roberts Courts.” Russell is a tenured law professor who has taught and supervised Yale and Quinnipiac law students. Knowing the history of the last eventful seven decades of high court decisions has informed much of Russell’s career, which ought not to include a federal judgeship.
Kevin F. Rennie of South Windsor is a lawyer and a former Republican state senator and representative.
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