President Biden Nominates Apellate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson To The Supreme Court

CNN reports, Biden nominates Ketanji Brown Jackson to be first Black woman to sit on Supreme Court:

President Joe Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court on Friday, setting in motion a historic confirmation process for the first Black woman to sit on the highest court in the nation.

“Today, as we watch freedom and liberty under attack abroad, I’m here to fulfill my responsibilities under the Constitution, to preserve freedom and liberty here in the United States of America,” Biden said at the White House as he introduced Jackson.

“For too long, our government, our courts haven’t looked like America,” Biden said. “I believe it’s time that we have a court reflects the full talents and greatness of our nation with a nominee of extraordinary qualifications, and that we inspire all young people to believe that they can one day serve their country at the highest level.”

Senate Democratic leaders hope to have a vote confirming Jackson to the court by mid-April.

Jackson, 51, currently sits on DC’s federal appellate court and had been considered the front-runner for the vacancy since Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement.

“I must begin these very brief remarks by thanking God for delivering me to this point in my professional journey. My life has been blessed beyond measure and I do know that one can only come this far by faith,” Jackson said.

“Among my many blessings, and indeed the very first, is the fact that I was born in this great country,” she added. “The United States of America is the greatest beacon of hope and democracy the world has ever known. I was also blessed from my early days to have had a supportive and loving family. My mother and father, who have been married for 54 years, are at their home in Florida right now and I know that they could not be more proud.”

Though historic, the choice of Jackson will not change the ideological makeup of the court. The court currently has six conservative justices and three liberal justices – and the retiring Breyer comes from the liberal camp. The court is already poised to continue its turn toward the right with high-profile cases and rulings expected from the court in the coming months on abortion, gun control and religious liberty issues.

The White House considered delaying the announcement, given the Russian invasion in Ukraine, but believed it was critical to get the second phase of the confirmation process moving, the official said.

The Washington Post provided a backgrounder piece this morning:

President Biden will nominate federal judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace retiring Justice Stephen G. Breyer, a historic choice that fulfills the president’s pledge to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court and would make Jackson, 51, just the third African American in the high court’s 233-year history.

A former public defender, Jackson served as a trial court judge in Washington for eight years before Biden elevated her last year to the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She was confirmed to that court after a relatively uncontentious Senate hearing and with the backing of three Republican lawmakers.

Jackson, who would bring a diverse personal and professional background to the high court, would join a significantly diminished liberal wing if confirmed. She was a law clerk for Breyer in 1999, and she helped shape federal sentencing policy on the U.S. Sentencing Commission after stints at private law firms.

At the federal public defender’s office in D.C. for 2½ years, Jackson represented indigent clients in criminal cases and detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. She would be the first justice since Thurgood Marshall with significant experience as a criminal defense attorney, something often stressed by her backers.

Jackson’s confirmation would not affect the current conservative 6-to-3 supermajority on the court. She would be likely to vote with liberals on the most contentious issues facing the Supreme Court, including affirmative action, abortion, LGBTQ protections and gun rights — but she would be replacing another liberal more than 30 years her senior.

But if Jackson’s Ivy League credentials are similar to other modern justices, the importance of her nomination is singular. She would be the first Black woman on the nation’s highest court after more than two centuries. And for the first time in history, there would be near-parity on the court, with five men and four women. As recently as 2009, there was only one woman.

Along with Justices Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor, a third of the court for the first time would be made up of people of color.

Civil rights groups fervently applauded the announcement, saying it was deeply unjust that an institution with so much influence over Americans’ lives was limited to White men for so long and calling Jackson’s nomination a big step forward.

“She would bring the court a distinct and increasingly indispensable perspective on how the laws of this land affect a vital and all-too-often neglected segment of our population,” said Jennifer Jones Austin, vice chair of the National Action Network. “Not only will she make history as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, but she will also be the first public defender to serve on the court.”

While Biden’s promise during his presidential campaign to choose a Black woman was applauded by Black leaders and the civil rights community, [white nationalist] Republicans complained that the president was applying a racial litmus test. [Fact Check: There have been 113 Suprme Court Justices. 107 of them have been white men.] The other two leading candidates were J. Michelle Childs, a federal judge in South Carolina, and Leondra Kruger, a justice on the California Supreme Court.

Along with his selection of Vice President Harris as his running mate, Biden’s pattern of elevating women and minorities to prominent government posts is now likely to be among his biggest legacies. Biden’s choice could also provide Democrats a political boost by energizing Black voters ahead of November’s midterms. The president’s popularity has been sagging, including among some African American voters who say he has not fulfilled his promises of sweeping change. [Prima Donna Vichy Democrats Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are whom you should direct your anger.]

More immediately, the nomination will kick off a Senate fight that is likely to be bitter, if recent confirmation battles are any indication. [Why? You just reported in te second paragraph: “She was confirmed to that court after a relatively uncontentious Senate hearing and with the backing of three Republican lawmakers.”] Liberal and civil rights groups are ready to tout Jackson’s qualifications and temperament and push back against any attacks they see as racist or sexist. Republicans and conservatives, meanwhile, have been drawing up plans to dismiss any Biden nominee as radical and outside the mainstream.

Do you know what is “radical and outside the mainstream”? MAGA/QAnon seditious insurrectionist Republicans in Congress who tried to overturn our democracy on January 6, 2021, and impose Donald Trump as our first autocratic GQP dictator. Reporters really need to stop parroting the projection from radical Republican insurrectionists.

Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lindsay O. Graham (S.C.) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), all backed Jackson when she was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit in a 53-to-44 vote. Still, the stakes are significantly higher for a Supreme Court nominee, and there is no guarantee that the three GOP senators who backed her last time would do so again for the high court.

Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., in 1970 and grew up in Miami in a family that valued public service. Her parents began their careers as public school teachers. Two uncles were law enforcement officers, including one who became Miami’s police chief.

A high school debate champion and class president, Jackson earned her undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard, where she met her future husband Patrick Jackson, a surgeon. She went on to work as a law clerk for three federal judges, including Breyer.

In eight years on the U.S. District Court, Jackson has presided over hundreds of cases. Republican lawmakers are likely to revive questions about several of her rulings against the Trump administration. She ordered Trump’s former White House counsel Donald McGahn to comply with a House subpoena, for example, declaring “presidents are not kings.”

Jackson also issued a nationwide preliminary injunction that blocked the Trump administration from expanding its power to deport migrants who illegally entered the United States by using a fast-track process.

At the courthouse just blocks from the U.S. Capitol, Jackson is known for her collegiality and as a skilled writer who works long hours. She reads final drafts of her opinions aloud while standing at a lectern to ensure her writing is accessible to a broader audience. In her chambers, the maroon and gold embossed set of U.S. Code books is not purely decorative but an integral part of Jackson’s process. She reminds her law clerks to “always start with the books.”

During her varied legal career, Jackson served as a vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, giving her experience working on a multi-member bipartisan panel that required compromise to shape federal sentencing policy. Her former law clerk Jo-Ann Sagar, a lawyer in D.C., said Jackson would bring that same approach to the Supreme Court.

“She considers herself a lifelong learner,” said Sagar, who also clerked for Breyer and for Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh during his time on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “There’s always something to be learned from someone even if you disagree with them. She’s very committed to that idea that there is always common ground and that the distances between us are not as significant as they may seem at first glance.”

Andrew Crespo, a Harvard Law School professor who previously worked as a public defender, said Jackson’s experience as an attorney for poor criminal defendants would bring a fresh perspective to the court on issues of policing and mass incarceration. While Breyer was outspoken with his concerns about the constitutionality of the death penalty, he was at times more moderate regarding cases involving the rights of criminal suspects.

“If you have represented people who have gone through that system, you understand its injustices because you have seen them up close,” said Crespo, who was a law clerk to Breyer and Justice Elena Kagan. “Someone who comes to the bench with those perspectives will be not just a welcome addition to the bench, but someone who moves the court in a welcome direction.”

On the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Jackson was part of a three-judge panel this fall that unanimously rejected former president Donald Trump’s bid to block the release of White House records to the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Supreme Court affirmed the decision in January with only Justice Clarence Thomas noting dissent.

Last summer, she allowed the Biden administration’s pandemic-related moratorium on evictions to remain in place before the radical Republican Supreme Court later blocked the measure. And in her first appellate ruling in February, Jackson wrote a unanimous opinion siding with labor unions in a challenge to a Trump administration change in collective bargaining rules.

At her D.C. Circuit confirmation hearing last spring, Jackson committed to being a neutral, fair-minded judge in response to questions from Republicans.

“I know very well what my obligations are, what my duties are, not to rule with partisan advantage in mind, not to tailor or craft my decisions in order to try to gain influence or do anything of the sort,” Jackson told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“It doesn’t make a difference whether or not the argument is coming from a death row inmate or the president of the United States,” she said. “I’m not injecting my personal views.”

Democrats want to be sure that all 48 Democratic senators, plus the two independents who vote with them, are present for any confirmation vote. Various health considerations, including covid-19 diagnoses, have often foiled Senate leaders’ plans in recent months, and Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), who suffered a stroke in late January, is expected to return to Washington sometime in March.

In the interim, public scrutiny during the confirmation process will fall on a handful of senators whose votes have been much sought-after in the Biden era.

CNN continues:

Chance to excite Democrats

Biden’s pick is a chance for him to fire up a Democratic base that is less excited to vote in this year’s midterm elections than it has been over the past several election cycles. The selection gives Biden a chance to deliver on one of his top campaign promises, and he’ll hope that the Black voters who were crucial to his election win will see this as a return on their investment.

While Jackson was the leading contender, the official said the President gave “considerable weight” to other finalists, including Judge J. Michelle Childs and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger.

For more than a year, the President had familiarized himself with her work, reading many of her opinions and other writings, along with those of other contenders.

But Biden was also was impressed by her life story, including her rise from federal public defender to federal appellate judge – and her upbringing as the daughter of two public school teachers and administrators.

“Her parents grew up with segregation, but never gave up hope that their children would enjoy the true promise of America,” the President said Friday.

“Her opinions are always carefully reasoned, tethered to precedent and demonstrate respect for how the law impacts everyday people,” Biden said. “It doesn’t mean she puts her thumb on the scale of justice one way or the other. But she understands the broader impacts of her decisions, whether it’s cases addressing the rights of workers or government service. She cares about making sure that our democracy works for the American people. She listens. She looks people in the eye – lawyers, defendants victims and families – and she strives ensure that everyone understands why she made a decision, what the law is, and what it means to them. She strives to be fair, to get it right, to do justice. That’s something all of us should remember. And it’s something I’ve thought about throughout this process.”

The goal of the leadership is to have the nominee confirmed by the April 11 recess.