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“President Joe Biden on Friday nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to be a Supreme Court justice. Biden’s announcement fulfilled his campaign pledge to nominate the first Black woman to serve on the court.” SCOTUSblog
The left praises Jackson’s ideology and life experience.
“Her parents worked as public school teachers, then ascended to higher positions within the public education system. Jackson attended Harvard (graduating magna cum laude) and Harvard Law School (graduating cum laude), then clerked at each level of the federal judiciary—culminating in a clerkship with Justice Stephen Breyer, whom she is set to replace. Jackson then spent a few years in Big Law, though she found the lifestyle isolating and unpleasant. She quit in 2005 to become a public defender in the District of Columbia, then joined the law firm Morrison & Foerster for a three-year stint in 2007…
“During her seven years as a federal trial judge, Jackson was practical, thorough, and fair… Obviously, this two-time Harvard graduate has the intellectual firepower to serve. And unlike Trump’s justices, she carved a path in life that was not padded by wealthy parents’ money, power, and connections.”
Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
“Jackson's experience as a public defender is a good thing. The Constitution guarantees felony criminal defendants the right to legal counsel, and the system doesn't work at all if people accused of crimes can't find a lawyer. Without defense attorneys (and particularly without public defenders), our justice system would be a series of show trials. A criminal charge would be tantamount to a conviction. So it would be good for the court to have a member — just one! — who has day-to-day experience and knowledge of what the law looks like when the government is marshaling its resources against you.”
Joel Mathis, The Week
“In 2019, she ruled that President Donald Trump could not prevent White House counsel Don McGahn from responding to a legislative subpoena on the grounds of absolute immunity… It was not the only time Jackson would rule against the Trump Administration…
“But Jackson also sided with the Trump Administration in 2019, ruling that the Department of Homeland Security could waive environmental laws in order to build a border wall between New Mexico and Mexico… Court-watchers expect she’ll settle into the liberal minority alongside Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. But Jackson isn’t a firebrand. Those who know her predict she’ll seek consensus-building on the high court and look for compromises with her conservative colleagues.”
Madeleine Carlisle, TIME
“Those who call out Biden’s pledge [to nominate a black woman] as inappropriate fail to acknowledge precedent established by Ronald Reagan. Indeed, one of the GOP’s favorite former presidents rightfully kept a campaign pledge to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court when he tapped Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Justice O’Connor’s imprint on the Court lasts to this day and she remains a beacon of hope for women, Democrats and Republicans alike…
“I know personally how much representation made a difference in my life. Growing up a product of public housing in Harlem, I remember the powerful impact Thurgood Marshall’s legal ascent had on my self-image and professional aspirations. Justice Marshall’s career inspired me to attend Howard Law School, to practice law as a prosecutor, but most importantly, he inspired me to devote my life’s work towards making this nation more consistent with its ideals. I would not be the congressman I am today if representation didn’t matter, or only mattered with restrictive caveats.”
Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, The Hill
The right criticizes Jackson’s ideology and judicial record.
The right criticizes Jackson’s ideology and judicial record.
“Of Biden’s three reported finalists for the high court, all of them liberal to one degree or another, Brown Jackson has a reputation as the most ideologically leftward. She could be seen, then, as yet another sop to the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party — as opposed to the more working-class blacks represented by U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, whose endorsement of Biden saved his stumbling presidential campaign. Clyburn was known to support a federal judge from South Carolina, Michelle Childs, who has more experience in daily trial courts and who already enjoys the support of several key Republican senators.”
Quin Hillyer, Washington Examiner
“With a conservative majority on the Court, a disposition that will not change by swapping out Breyer with a like-minded lefty, progressives would have been better served by a jurist in the mold of Justice Elena Kagan — a skilled progressive strategist, whose collegial manner has paved a loose alliance with the Court’s tractable conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. That helps progressives dodge some cases they should lose, narrow some losses, and steal the occasional win…
“Jackson is more in the fiery radical mold of Justice Sonia Sotomayor; the Left may swoon, but a justice who provokes rather than beguiles the Court’s center is not going to get progressives the five votes they need to prevail in big cases.”
Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review
“In 2019, [Jackson] wrote a lengthy opinion in Make the Road New York v. McAleenan in favor of immigration groups challenging the Department of Homeland Security's expansion of the expedited-removal process to the statutory limit. Jackson surprisingly ruled that she had authority to enjoin the policy despite a federal law stating the question was left to the ‘sole and unreviewable discretion’ of the agency. The D.C. Circuit reversed Judge Jackson as exercising considerable judicial overreach…
“Jackson also was accused of judicial overreach in American Federation of Government Employees v. Trump in 2018, when she stopped the Trump administration from implementing provisions limiting the ability of federal workers’ unions to collectively bargain…
“A unanimous ruling by the D.C. Circuit held that Jackson lacked jurisdiction to decide the case because the statute clearly mandates such challenges must be brought first in the agency process and that judicial review is then available in the courts of appeals. Those reversals evidence a more fluid approach to statutory interpretation that even more liberal judges found to be beyond the pale.”
Jonathan Turley, The Hill
“Judge Jackson has not distinguished herself with scholarship or the quality of her legal writing, and she has a discouraging record of her decisions being reversed even by fellow liberal judges. Progressives championed her because of her record as a federal public defender, seeing her as an advocate for soft-on-crime approaches to sentencing and the criminal law. Liberals cheered her for rulings against Donald Trump. Nobody has attempted to present her as a faithful steward of the Constitution. Expect to hear a lot from Democrats about race, gender, sympathy, and empathy. It will fall to Republicans to talk about law and the Constitution.”
The Editors, National Review
A libertarian's take
“Jackson could have been an excellent selection for a Democratic president in her own right and indeed made history as the first black woman on the nation’s high court. However, Biden engaged in a tokenistic, exclusionary, identity-based selection process through which he categorically ruled out all men and non-black women from consideration. He specifically made it clear he would only consider black women. The president narrowed the pool of candidates down to a tiny percentage of qualified individuals based on sex and race that do not affect one’s ability to be a good judge…
“This was discriminatory, divisive, and un-American. But it was also profoundly condescending and insulting to Jackson and other black female judges. Rightly or wrongly, Jackson, if confirmed, will always have questions lingering over whether she would’ve been selected in the absence of blatant racial selection. By openly making his selection about race and gender politics, Biden attempted to appease and pander to the woke Left. Yet, that came at the price of doing Jackson a grave disservice.”
Brad Polumbo, Washington Examiner
