Biden’s Nominee - Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson

In 2019, Joe Biden promised he would nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court of the United States. On Friday, President Biden fulfilled that promise, nominating the 51-year old Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court..Judge Jackson currently serves as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and served as a law clerk to Justice Stephen Breyer, the retiring justice she has been nominated to replace. If confirmed, she would be the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, but in many other ways, she also has much in common with the eight justices currently on the bench. Like three of the serving justices, she attended Harvard Law School; like five of the serving justices, she clerked for a Supreme Court judge; and like seven of the serving justices, she spent time in private practice working for a major law firm. (She would also be the third Jackson to serve on the Supreme Court.) If Judge Jackson’s nomination is a break with the past in one sense, it also represents continuity in many others..As she heads into the confirmation process in the U.S. Senate, opinions on the nominee and the nomination abound. The New York Times called her rulings “detailed, methodical and leaning left” while the Wall Street Journal said she had a “thin appellate record” and was “probably to the left of retiring Justice Stephen Breyer” on questions of regulation and business. Senator Lindsey Graham stated that the nomination of Judge Jackson meant that that “radical Left has won.” House Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn, on the other hand, declared “I do not see Judge Brown Jackson as being radical at all”, and noted that Lindsey Graham had voted for Judge Jackson to be confirmed to her current post on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas promised to “closely scrutinize her record” to ensure that she would be “an impartial jurist, not a robed partisan.”The Senate is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, with Vice President Kamala Harris holding a casting vote. Mathematically, this should mean that Judge Jackson’s confirmation is assured. In reality, Democratic senators range across a broad spectrum and several may be reluctant to vote for any nominee who is perceived or projected to be out of the mainstream. The last three nominees to the Supreme Court were all confirmed by narrow margins, after intense debates in the Senate and the media, and there is every indication that Judge Jackson will be subjected to the same protracted probing on her past rulings, judicial philosophy, political affiliations, and public speeches and statements..Judge Jackson is not new to the snakes and ladders of public life in Washington, D.C. She ruled against the Trump administration in its attempt to ignore Congressional subpoenas. She did not permit the Trump administration to expand the use of expedited deportation proceedings. .If confirmed, she would serve on a Court that may soon be grappling with difficult questions relating to abortion, affirmative action, and claims of electoral discrimination and disenfranchisement. The job of an associate justice of the Supreme Court pays $265,600 a year. The toll extracted by a difficult confirmation process may have to be paid over a lifetime.