President Donald Trump is a big fan of his latest Supreme Court pick, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and has been singing his praises–not just during the confirmation process, but to this day, after Kavanaugh has already assumed his role on the high court. For sure, outside of the sexual misconduct allegations leveled against him, Kavanaugh has a stellar professional and academic career, but there’s one thing Trump keeps mentioning that is not only false, but utterly nonsensical. In an interview that aired Tuesday on Fox Business Network, he said it again.
“Number one at Yale Law School,” Trump said, describing Kavanaugh in a conversation with host Trish Regan [catch it at about the 5:20 mark in the video above]. He also said it at a White House press conference on October 1.
There’s just one problem with that: Yale Law School doesn’t assign grades, and hasn’t since 1968. First-year classes are evaluated on a pass-fail basis. In the second and third years, students still don’t get traditional letter grades, instead receiving marks of Honors, Pass, Low Pass, or Fail. Failure is extremely rare, and most students receive Pass.
While some may think that this is essentially the same as grades, just without using letters like A, B, or C, that’s not true because the school itself says that their system “does not allow the computation of grade point averages.” They also don’t calculate class rank, so one can’t even be sure who was number one in a given class.
Yale can get away with this because they’re the top law school in the country, and have consistently been ranked as such for years. Firms that are recruiting know that if a student is at Yale, that probably means that they’re smart enough and educated enough to succeed in their professional career.
So yes, Brett Kavanaugh is a very smart man and a top legal scholar. His academic and professional records speak for themselves. What President Trump says, however, is just plain false.
[Image via Fox Business screengrab]
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