Why Do Supreme Court Nominees Have ‘Sherpas’?
When Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, one of the first items of business was selecting someone who would guide the judge through the Senate’s ritualistic confirmation process. Former Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona was tapped for the job: He would be Kavanaugh’s “sherpa.”
Last year, former Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire served as the sherpa for Neil Gorsuch in his own confirmation hearings. “Well, it’s kind of a funny name,” she acknowledged in a recent NPR interview, “’cause a sherpa means bringing someone up a mountain.”
How did a term for a guide on Himalayan mountaineering expeditions get transposed to the halls of Congress? It’s a case study in how words from once memorably observed, “On occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”) But in the case of words like , it’s worth reflecting on what kind of baggage English speakers are making them carry as they scale linguistic peaks.
