'Tiger Mom' Amy Chua went to bat for Brett Kavanaugh last year. Kavanaugh just hired her daughter.

&quot;Tiger Mom&quot; Amy Chua and her daughters

(Image credit: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images for TIME)

published 12 June 2019

Yale Law professor Amy Chua, best known for her controversial 2011 parenting memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, praised Brett Kavanaugh as a great "mentor to women" in a Wall Street Journal op-ed three days after President Trump nominated him to the Supreme Court in 2018, then defended him again after women accused him of sexual assault. Chua, a member of Yale Law's clerkship committee, noted in her op-ed that her daughter Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, graduating from Yale Law, was supposed to start her appellate clerkship with Kavanaugh that summer. Some people found Chua's op-ed a little self-serving at the time.

Chua mentioning that her daughter will "probably be looking for a different clerkship" is her way of suggesting "she isn't entirely self-interested" because "her daughter will be out of a job," Elie Mystal wrote at Above the Law in July 2018. But that's only credible to people "who don't know how the game is played."

Yes, Chua's daughter will have to find a different lower-court clerkship if Kavanaugh is confirmed. But in future years, after doing her circuit court clerkship, Chua's daughter will be nearly guaranteed a Supereme Court clerkship, which is the big enchilada, from now-Justice Kavanaugh. Chua's daughter will be at the top of the list next year, and Chua is just counting on you people who haven't been educated in her exceptional parenting style to be too stupid to notice that. [Above the Law]

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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