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Letter: Kavanaugh has failed the test

President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh leaves for a lunch break while appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2018, to begin his confirmation to replace retired Justice Anthony Kennedy. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Judge Brett Kavanaugh, nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, has failed the test of integrity, neutrality and fairness expected of any judge in the country.

Think of these confirmation hearings as a trial. The opposing parties are entitled by law to some form of discovery of relevant facts by which to evaluate the substance of the other side’s claim. The law requires the judge to fairly referee this process. Indisputably, vast documentation relevant to judge Kavanaugh’s nomination has not been delivered to the judiciary committee, yet the confirmation process goes forward.

Indeed, it goes forward when 42,000 pages, a fragment of the existing material, have been dumped on the committee just a day before the hearings begin, too late to be reasonably considered. While Kavanaugh is not an opposing party in his confirmation hearings, as may be said of Republican and Democratic senators of the committee, he is nevertheless a judge. Would a judge, implicitly claiming to be a person of the highest integrity, really stand silent while his qualifications, evidence of which was urgently and reasonably sought, were evaluated on patently and deliberately insufficient grounds?

Kenneth A. Bronston, Salt Lake City

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