More than 1200 US law professors have signed a letter saying that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh displayed a lack of judicial restraint at a Senate hearing last week - behavior that would be disqualifying for any court nominee.
Kavanaugh was responding to accusations from a California professor, Christine Blasey Ford, that he sexually assaulted her at a house party when they were teenagers in the 1980s. At the hearing, he vehemently defended his innocence and derided what he called "a calculated and orchestrated political hit".
Afterward, law professors across the country began discussing "with great distress, the unprecedented and unfathomable demeanor of Judge Kavanaugh," said Bernard Harcourt, a professor at Columbia Law School.
The letter, which will be sent to the Senate, grew out of those conversations.
"It was a spontaneous reaction to the hearing," Harcourt said.