For the critics, he is “a conservative buffoon,” said Barbara Perry, a presidential and Supreme Court scholar at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “Unfortunately by virtue of the sex scandal, whether it was true or not, that will follow him.”

The stench from that controversy explains why Kavanaugh, 57, draws greater ire than former President Donald Trump’s other Supreme Court appointees and the veteran conservatives who have written the most controversial opinions.

In a Marquette University Law School poll in March, 32% of people viewed Kavanaugh unfavorably, compared with 21% favorably, giving him by far the court’s worst net-favorability rating of -11 percentage points. Of the other conservatives, only Justice Amy Coney Barrett, at -1, had a negative net-favorability rating.

The poll numbers if anything understate the vehemence of the opposition. At a recent protest at Kavanaugh’s Maryland home, where he lives with his wife and two teenage daughters, one demonstrator wore a t-shirt saying “stop raping women” and another bore a sign calling for Kavanaugh’s arrest. In the most extreme example, an armed man was arrested outside the house last month and charged with attempted murder.