Cornyn instead spent exactly two weeks there, in a seminar on jurisprudence in the U.K. and U.S., hosted by two schools that aren’t globally revered and recognized.
Back in 1990, Cornyn was a district judge in San Antonio, trying to snag a seat on the state Supreme Court, which he would ultimately win and use as a launch pad for a career free of flowing black robes, where he wouldn’t be forced to hear any pesky cases ever again. According to Salon, nearly a dozen write-ups on then-District Court Judge Cornyn included references to a fancy degree that doesn’t exist. The claim? “Cornyn had ‘graduated’ from ‘the Judicial Studies Program’ at Oxford.”
The Oxford claim misrepresents Cornyn's qualifications, and though its origins are unclear, went uncorrected by Cornyn for the duration of the campaign, leaving voters with the impression that he passed through one of the most prestigious institutions in the world.
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A 2020 freedom of information request to Oxford University reviewed by Salon returned no record of Cornyn graduating from or attending a regular or continuing studies program offered through the school. The university's Faculty of Law had no record of a Judicial Studies Program at all.
It appears that the claim stems from a two-week seminar jointly hosted by the National Judicial College at the University of Nevada, Reno and Florida State University Law School, which Cornyn attended in 1988, two years before his state Supreme Court run.
Cornyn won, of course, and notably, leaned hard on the grave sin that is misrepresentation of qualifications in his next campaign—for Texas Attorney General in 1998. After attacking his Republican opponent, Cornyn won that campaign as well, and four years later, entered the U.S. Senate, never forced to do judge stuff ever again, and instead paving the way for a 17-year stretch of being judgmental in the Senate—a stretch that seems likely to end on Nov. 3, when Democratic candidate and Purple Heart-decorated combat veteran M.J. Hegar unseats him in a race being closely watched across the nation. Cornyn’s latest attack on the untouchable Hegar?
She says swears! Quel horreur!
Hegar’s campaign launch video remains one of the best in the history of modern politics.
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