Jackson had been the favorite for the seat since Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement last month because she checked the most boxes for a President who desperately needs a win in advance of the November midterm elections.
Earlier this week, a dozen liberal groups sent a letter to Biden urging him to "build on your commitment to professional diversity by appointing someone with civil rights or public defense experience to the Supreme Court." While the letter didn't name Jackson, her background is the only one of the three finalists that fit the sort of person the letter described. (Jackson worked as a public defender for several years in the mid-2000s.)
Jackson's support among liberals was in stark contrast to concerns they voiced about another Biden Supreme Court finalist: South Carolina's J. Michelle Childs. "Her record looks much more like the typical corporate lawyer that the White House has purposefully tried to get away from in its attempt to remake the federal bench," read an analysis in the American Prospect in late January.
In picking Jackson, Biden is giving his base what it wants. And he is doing so at a time when that base is quite clearly something short of enthusiastic about him and his presidency.
A recent Gallup poll, which showed Biden's approval rating at 41% among Americans overall, also found that just 79% of Democrats said they approved of the job he was doing. That's a sharp dip from where Biden was as recently as August 2021, when more than 90% of Democrats said they supported him. A recent CNN poll showed that while 41% of Americans "strongly" disapprove of the job Biden is doing, only 15% "strongly" approve.
Then there's the fact that with his Build Back Better legislation stalled, Biden badly needs to start putting wins on the board -- and Jackson appears to be a solid bet to be confirmed by the Senate.
Why? Because she has just been confirmed by the Senate.
In June 2021, Jackson was confirmed with 53 votes to serve on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. All 50 Democrats -- including occasional renegades Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona -- voted for her. And three Republicans joined them: Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine.
During her confirmation hearings for that post, Jackson said that she does not "rule with partisan advantage in mind."
It's unclear whether the likes of Graham, Collins and Murkowski -- or any other Republicans -- will vote for Jackson's nomination to the Supreme Court. But that she has won Republican votes in the not-too-distant past allows Biden to make the case that he doesn't just talk the talk on bipartisanship, but that he walks the walk.
For Biden, Jackson's nomination represents an opportunity to fix what ails him. He's looking to change the subject -- with a majority of the American public disapproving of the way he had handled the Russia situation -- and she represents the best chance for him to do just that.
Source: CNN, Chris Cillizza, February 25, 2022
Ketanji Brown Jackson is Biden’s history-making pick for the Supreme Court
In a judicial system where former prosecutors are dramatically overrepresented, Jackson could change the way the courts address criminal legal issues.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is President Joe Biden’s nominee to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, he announced Friday morning. The first Black woman nominated to serve on the nation’s highest court, Jackson — currently a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit — will, if confirmed, become one of nine final arbiters of what the laws mean in a nation that has a long history of denying Black women the protection of those laws.
Jackson will also be joining the Supreme Court at a time when a six-justice conservative majority controls the court’s trajectory, leaving her and the other two more liberal appointees with little say over many of the most high-profile cases coming before the justices. With at least five of the six conservatives (the other being Chief Justice John Roberts) apparently willing to jettison precedent and practice to advance their at-times reactionary aims, Jackson will become a justice at one of the most difficult times for legal liberals since the New Deal.
While being the first Black woman nominated for the Supreme Court is historic, the court’s history is so overwhelmingly white and male that all of the relevant numbers bear attention: Jackson will be only the third Black person to serve on the Supreme Court, after former justice Thurgood Marshall and Justice Clarence Thomas, and only the second woman of color, along with Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Jackson’s professional experience will also bring something different to the court. She will be the first justice to have served as a criminal defense lawyer since Marshall stepped down from the court in 1991, and the first justice to have worked in a public defender’s office.
Jackson’s nomination follows a career that has had her under discussion as a possible nominee since Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016. At that time, Jackson was just finishing her third year as a federal-district court judge. Then-President Barack Obama had nominated Jackson — a former Breyer clerk — to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in late 2012. In early 2016, Obama interviewed her for Scalia’s seat, although the nomination ultimately (and unsuccessfully) went to Merrick Garland.
Five years later, though, Jackson was Biden’s first confirmed appellate judge. She took her seat on the D.C. Circuit in June 2021, after being confirmed with support from just three Senate Republicans. Less than a year later, after long being considered the front-runner for the nomination, Jackson was selected by Biden on Friday.
Biden pledged during his presidential campaign to nominate a Black woman should he have the chance to name a Supreme Court nominee and recommitted to that promise when Breyer announced his retirement, so his choice of a Black woman for the nomination, though historic, comes as no surprise. Much has — appropriately — been written about that commitment and what the appointment of Jackson to the court will mean, in the law and for people across the country.
Jackson’s nomination also makes a strong statement about the law and judiciary in that Biden chose one of the handful of appellate judges with any significant experience on the criminal defense side of the criminal legal system to add her voice to Supreme Court discussions. Given the failure to pass legislation following the racial justice and criminal justice pledges that Democratic politicians, including Biden, made in the summer of 2020, Jackson’s nomination could turn out to be one of the most significant developments to follow that moment. In a judicial system where former prosecutors are dramatically overrepresented, Jackson — along with Biden’s many lower-court nominees with public defender and other criminal defense experience — could change the way the courts address criminal legal issues.
She will, however, be entering a court that could, before she even takes her seat there, end the constitutional right to an abortion that has been affirmed repeatedly since the court’s 1973 opinion in Roe v. Wade. The court will also, before her predecessor steps down, decide a case that could further stymie efforts to regulate personal gun ownership in the United States. It has further agreed to hear cases, likely in the next term, over the future permissibility of affirmative action in higher education and whether those who oppose same-sex couples’ marriages can be exempted from public accommodations laws.
Jackson’s history does include significant time working with people who had differing views from hers. In addition to more traditional clerkships and time in private practice before becoming a judge, Jackson also spent four years as a commissioner on the U.S. Sentencing Commission — an independent agency responsible for crafting the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and related matters — and two years earlier in her career as a lawyer with the commission.
In response to a written Judiciary Committee question noting support for her D.C. Circuit nomination from more conservative corners and asking how she worked with those with different views, Jackson noted, “As a Supreme Court law clerk … I evaluated complex legal issues and regularly exchanged significant insights with the clerks of other Justices. Similarly, my work in both private practice and on the Sentencing Commission (a bipartisan policymaking body by statute) routinely required me to consider, assess, and incorporate the views and concerns of brilliant lawyers and judges with different backgrounds and perspectives.”
In the coming weeks, the nation will learn much more about Jackson as the Senate considers her nomination. Given Senate rules allowing Supreme Court confirmations with a simple majority vote, Jackson is likely to be confirmed absent an unexpected development.
That confirmation will be historic yet completely expected.
Jackson has been one of the likeliest candidates for this vacancy since Biden announced his pledge. She was a young short-lister in the Obama administration; a front-runner when Biden took office, along with California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger; and the front-runner when Breyer announced his retirement. Much as he did in his selection of now-Vice President Kamala Harris as a running mate, Biden has managed to make history while simultaneously doing exactly what was expected.
Source: grid.news, Chris Geidner, February 25, 2022
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