Kavanaugh Hires Court's First All-Female Team of Clerks

The newest Supreme Court justice will hear his first cases on Tuesday, and the New York Times reports that Brett Kavanaugh will be assisted by a notable team of clerks. All four are women, a first in the Supreme Court's history. Kavanaugh actually made note of the fact during his testimony to refute allegations of sexual misconduct, also pointing out that most of his 48 clerks over the last dozen years have been women. The justice said it's been a conscious decision on his part to help remedy the issue of women being historically under-represented among higher-echelon clerk positions.

Not everyone is wowed by that. “Unfortunately, it’s going to take a lot more than female clerks to undo the damage to the legitimacy of the court done by this travesty of a confirmation process," Elizabeth Wydra, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, tells the newspaper. "Women will feel much more confident in the court when their fundamental rights are protected and their equal dignity is respected in the rulings handed down by the justices.” USA Today, meanwhile, has a preview of Kavanaugh's first cases; none are particularly controversial. The first one, on Tuesday, looks at a law that gives habitual criminals a 15-year-minimum sentence for a crime involving a gun. (More Brett Kavanaugh stories.)