As accusations of sexual impropriety have threatened to upend the confirmation of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, a common theme has emerged connecting the decades-old alleged incidents: heavy drinking.

Christine Blasey Ford described Judge Kavanaugh as “stumbling drunk” when, as a 17-year-old prep school student in suburban Washington, he allegedly tried to force himself on her during a party in 1982. Then, at an alcohol-fueled gathering during his freshman year at Yale, his former classmate Deborah Ramirez says, Judge Kavanaugh exposed himself to her. He has denied both allegations.

The backdrop to these complaints was a culture of hard partying that permeated certain quarters of high school and college life in the 1980s, when binge drinking among teenagers had reached record levels. No evidence has emerged to indicate that the episodes of drinking ascribed to Judge Kavanaugh back then carried forward into his professional or family life, or that the handful of F.B.I. background checks he has faced in his official Washington career unearthed any red flags about his drinking as an adult.

But it is his high school and undergraduate years that have proved to be a mine field during his Supreme Court confirmation process, and questions about drinking during that period are expected to come up when he testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Judge Kavanaugh himself has provided grist for this line of inquiry through his wistful references to youthful drinking in yearbook entries and speeches over the years, though he has said he never drank so much that he blacked out or could not remember events.