Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is an impressive Supreme Court nominee

If confirmed she will be first Black woman on the high court

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson smiles. White House photo.

President Joe Biden has nominated federal appeals court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, the first Black woman selected to serve on the high court.

Introducing Jackson at the White House on Feb. 25, Biden declared, “I believe it’s time that we have a court that reflects the full talents and greatness of our nation."

With his nominee standing alongside, the president praised her as having “a pragmatic understanding that the law must work for the American people.” He said, “She strives to be fair, to get it right, to do justice.”

In brief remarks, Jackson thanked Biden, saying she was “humbled by the extraordinary honor of this nomination." She highlighted her family's first-hand experience with the entirety of the legal system, as judges and lawyers, an uncle who was Miami's police chief and another who was imprisoned on drug charges.

She also spoke of the historic nature of her nomination, noting she shared a birthday with Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to be confirmed to the federal bench.

“If I’m fortunate enough to be confirmed as the next associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, I can only hope that my life and career, my love of this country and the Constitution, and my commitment to upholding the rule of law and the sacred principles upon which this great nation was founded, will inspire future generations of Americans,” she said.

Biden has delivered on a campaign promise to make the historic appointment and further diversify a court that was made up entirely of white men for almost two centuries.

Biden affirmed in January that he will nominate the first Black woman to the high court, declaring such historic representation is “long overdue” and promising to announce his choice by the end of February. 

The historic announcement was made during Black History Month and just days before the beginning of Women’s History Month in March at a time when the nation is grappling with gender and racial equality. 

If confirmed Jackson, 51, will replace retiring 83-year-old liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, who will have spent nearly 28 years on the Supreme Court by the time he leaves at the end of his term. 

Biden promised a nominee worthy of Breyer’s legacy. 

“I’ve made no decision except one: The person I will nominate will be somebody of extraordinary qualifications, character and integrity,” he said. “And that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court. It is long overdue.”

In Jackson, the president has selected an immensely and well deserving nominee to replace Breyer.

Judge Jackson graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, then attended Harvard Law School, where she graduated cum laude and was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Jackson who once worked as one of Breyer’s law clerks early in her legal career, 

has shown a dedication to public service.

She represented defendants who did not have the means to pay for a lawyer. She would be the first former federal public defender to serve on the Supreme Court.

She served as Vice Chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the agency that develops federal sentencing policy, before becoming a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2013.

She was confirmed with bipartisan support to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2021.

With her resume and record, Jackson would be expected to sail through the nomination process. However, partisan politics is already rearing its ugly head. 

Before Biden even announced his nominee, some in the GOP had already mocked Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman, as a choice based on affirmative action and politics. 

They conveniently forgot that both former President Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump publicly announced that they would nominee a woman to the Supreme Court. 

Reagan fulfilled his campaign pledge by nominating Sandra Day O’Connor to become the first female Supreme Court justice. 

Amy Comey Barrett was one of three justices, former President Donald Trump appointed to the Supreme Court, moving the court further to the right.

After Biden announced the exceptionally qualified Jackson as his nominee, some Republicans discovered a new line of attack.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham expressed disappointment in a tweet Friday saying Biden was going with the choice of the “radical left.”

The irony is that Graham was one of three Republicans who voted to confirm Jackson to the appeals court last year. I guess the judge suddenly became a radical just after Graham helped to confirm her to federal court. 

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said he looked forward to meeting with Jackson and "studying her record, legal views and judicial philosophy.” But he noted he had voted against her a year ago.

While bipartisan support would be preferable it is not necessary. As Graham had earlier pointed out if “Democrats hang together” they can replace Breyer without a Republican vote. 

But first Jackson will have to withstand misrepresentation of her record and unfair questioning of her career by some opponents.

During the confirmation process she will need to draw upon her experience of proving others wrong who have underestimated her based on her race or gender.

But they don’t know her story.

Jackson was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Miami, Florida. Her parents attended historically black colleges and universities. Both started their careers as public-school teachers and administrators in the Miami-Dade Public School system.

When she was in preschool, her father attended law school. Her father, Johnny Brown was the attorney for the Miami-Dade School Board. Her mother, Ellery Brown, was the principal at New World School of the Arts, a public magnet high school in Miami.

Jackson was a speech and debate star, student body president of Miami Palmetto Senior High School. But despite her achievements, when she told her high school guidance counselor she wanted to attend Harvard, the guidance counselor warned that she should not set her “sights so high.”

But Jackson was clear about who she was and what she could accomplish.

In her 1988 Palmetto High School yearbook, Jackson was quoted as saying: 

“I want to go into law and eventually have a judicial appointment.”

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