When did due process become something which must be defended?

Ashe Schow of the Washington Examiner reports.

‘Yes means yes’ opposition: It’s about due process, not misogyny

It’s easy enough for women writers to attack men who write against “yes means yes” laws as crude misogynists. But it’s a simple and lazy response that ignores all the women who oppose them as well based on concerns about due process rights.

Many big-name journalists have been writing about the “yes means yes” laws recently — Ezra Klein, Jonah Goldberg, Jonathan Chait — you may notice a pattern there. Salon’s Katie McDonough insinuated that Chait — who has written in opposition to the law — dismisses women’s opinions on the law in order to respond to a man – Klein.

I, too, received criticism when I interviewed four due process advocates with intimate knowledge of what a lack of such rights can cause. I was chastised for only interviewing men (naturally, I get no credit for being a woman).

But in fact, due process is important, and due-process advocacy is by no means exclusive to men.

Elizabeth Bartholet, one of 28 current and former Harvard Law professors who recently wrote in opposition to the university’s new sexual assault policy, told the Washington Examiner that while she had no “silver bullet” to creating a perfect policy, she did believe such a policy should take into account the rights of the accuser and the accused.

“[A] starting point in an academic institution is an institutional process that involves faculty, and that focuses on the various interests at issue which include: the rights of those victimized by sexual misconduct, the rights of those falsely accused of same, and the rights of both faculty and students to both free speech and freedom to engage in personal relationships,” Bartholet wrote in an email. “The federal government is forcing down the throats of universities throughout the land the government’s solutions.”