MEGAN MCARDLE: Kavanaugh Is Already Being Punished.

The left may still be arguing about the standards for putting someone on the Supreme Court, but the right is now conducting a public referendum on the rules for agreeing to wreck a man’s life over accusations that cannot be corroborated or conclusively disproven.

About a year after #MeToo began, we still haven’t defined those rules in a rigorous, broadly defensible way. The movement’s proponents tend to seek the social and economic equivalent of extremely harsh sentences, upon the lowest standard of proof — “I believe women.” . . .

The venomous Kavanaugh fight illustrates one reason that’s unworkable. The harsher the penalty, the more proof people will demand before imposing it. But Hawaii offers another reason to be wary: The element of randomness makes for a weaker deterrent.

If he weren’t a conservative Supreme Court nominee, Kavanaugh would be facing none of this. Knowing that, do men think, “Better treat women well”? Or do they think, “Luckily, I’m not a fancy Republican lawyer”?

Perhaps, as feminists hope, we’ll end up making men hypervigilant about possible offenses. But another response seems at least as likely: If you can’t control your fate, why bother being good?

I predict that male federal judges will hire fewer female clerks next year.