I did not listen to the ad above, so perhaps it is worse than it appears. But unraveling rape shield evidentiary rules are a bona fide issue in a campaign for a Supreme Court job. In most, if not all, states, evidentiary rules are established by the courts, not the legislature. One of those rules prohibits defense attorneys from probing the past (esp. sexual past) of a rape victim because it is believed that a woman shown to be “loose” or “slutty” will cause a jury to conclude that she either “deserved” to be raped or that it doesn't matter that she was raped because she was a slut anyway. Furthermore, victims of rape, who are already extremely reluctant to come forward and report and testify against their attackers, will be even less likely to do so if they know that a defense attorney will be able to ask all kinds of questions about their past sexual history. Rape shield laws are aimed at protecting rape victims and ensuring that the focus of the trial stays on the actions of the alleged perpetrator and not the past conduct of the victim. For whatever reason, rape shield laws are unpopular among conservatives and championed by liberals. Conservatives tend to believe that the past sexual history of a rape victim should be fair game because, after all, if some slutty, seductive woman lured and misled a good ol' red-blooded American boy into thinking that he was going to “get some,” and things “got out of hand,” then the so-called rape “victim” probably is as much to blame as the accused rapist. That mindset, which obviously exists in the mind of a person who opposes rape shield laws, obviously lends more support to potential rapists and makes it much, much harder for rape victims to come forward, face their attacker in court, and testify. So, a judge who opposes rape shield laws is obviously biased against rape victims and probably believes that rape victims are all a bunch of whores who, waking up with regrets the next morning, decide to pin the badge of “rapist” on their poor, misled partner.