4. #BelieveWomen and the Presumption of Innocence: Clarifying the Questions for Law and Life

In September 2018, Christine Blasey Ford accused Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, of sexually assaulting her when the two were teenagers. Ford’s supporters told us to #BelieveWomen, while Kavanaugh’s supporters invoked the presumption of innocence. This chapter does not attempt to reconcile these two competing considerations but to engage in the inquiry that is prior to it. First, it unpacks different understandings of #BelieveWomen, ranging from standpoint epistemology to altering the burden of proof, and it devotes significant attention to a view that has received little attention in the literature, a view that conjoins the trust and respect that is owed with a non-reductionist approach to testimony—essentially, the position that sometimes, we can and should believe someone based on her say-so. it then explores the complexities of these various understandings in both ordinary life and the law. Finally, it turns to how the presumption of innocence is understood, how the presumption is difficult to export outside the legal context, but how the underlying idea that animates its invocation is the question of what we owe each other before we think ill of another.