What do the Kavanaugh hearings reveal about many of our top law schools, professors, judges and former clerks? A self-interested blindness, where every incentive works in favor of those with the most power.

By John F. Mueller @ Politico Magazine, Sept. 27

After I graduated from Yale Law School in 2010, I clerked for federal appeals court judges on the courts headquartered in Boston and New York—two judges at a level akin to that of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Both were Democratic appointees, named to the bench by President Bill Clinton. I had applied to Judge Kavanaugh, too, but I never heard back [....]

[....] cynicism was ingrained in an exceedingly opaque clerkship process, one in which game-playing was obvious, but the rules of the game were not. Distinction at Yale is not tied all that closely to grades: The law school abolished traditional grades in the late 1960s, adopting a system whereby there are essentially only two grades: Honors and Pass. Career advancement is tied particularly to networking—making a few well-connected faculty members see themselves in you, so that down the line they’ll call their friends on the bench. Clerkships were an obsession: a good one, we gathered, had the power to make a career.

The resulting patronage system fostered a sort of self-interested blindness on the part of faculty and students alike. Most federal judges, in my experience, are reasonable and desirable bosses for the handful of clerks they employ each year. Some, however, are not. And all preside, even more than the standard boss, over a dictatorship. Federal anti-discrimination laws do not apply to federal judges. Meanwhile, given their stature and connections, federal judges hold tremendous power over the reputations and career prospects of their clerks.

Notorious among the judges to avoid, when I was in school, was Alex Kozinski [....]