Judges and justices ought to follow their jurisprudence, not their political mandates. Even if taking on the case could have struck a blow to abortion, it would have been immoral for Kavanaugh to let politics, not principles, guide his decision-making.

Furthermore, Jesse Kelly’s insinuation that us defenders of Kavanaugh went to “war” for him only to achieve a political end is downright dangerous. I would hope that Kavanaugh’s defenders would have gone to bat for Merrick Garland if a Republican senator leaked an 11th-hour allegation of sexual assault with zero evidence to try and maliciously torpedo his confirmation to the Supreme Court.

The importance of defending Kavanaugh was about so much more than policy. It was a defense of the norm that civil society will not allow people’s careers to be destroyed in the total and complete absence of evidence. Combined with the loss of Roy Moore, the Kavanaugh confirmation established that while there is ample room to rule against accused men in the court of public opinion provided that the accusers supply the preponderance of the evidence, women can’t just make up allegations out of thin air as the Avenatti-backed Julie Swetnick did.