US president Joe Biden said he would nominate federal judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court on Friday, fulfilling his promise to put forward a candidate who would be the first black woman to sit on America’s most powerful bench.
Jackson would, if confirmed, fill a vacancy at the high court left by the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer, who last month said he would step aside at the end of the court’s current term, typically in late June or early July, assuming his successor had been nominated and confirmed.
Biden called Jackson “one of our nation’s brightest legal minds and will be an exceptional justice”. In nominating Jackson, a federal appeals court judge in the District of Columbia, Biden has made good on his commitment to pick a black woman to sit on the Supreme Court if a vacancy arose during his mandate, a promise he first made as a candidate for president.
Democratic lawmakers largely applauded the appointment. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, said he expected to move quickly to schedule a confirmation hearing and subsequent vote in the Senate on her nomination. US presidents have the power to nominate Supreme Court justices, but their nominations are vetted by the Senate judiciary committee and must be confirmed in a simple majority vote in the upper chamber of Congress.
“I have no doubt that Judge Jackson would make an outstanding Supreme Court justice. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has been confirmed by the United States Senate on a bipartisan basis three times and I expect she will again earn bipartisan support in the Senate,” Schumer said.
In addition to her confirmation to the DC appeals court, the Senate had also previously approved Jackson as a member of the US sentencing commission, the judicial agency that develops federal sentencing policy, and a federal district court judgeship.
The nomination represents Biden’s first, and potentially only, chance to make his mark on the US Supreme Court during his presidency. If confirmed, Jackson’s appointment would not rock the bench’s ideological make-up, which is split 6-3 between conservative and liberal justices.
The confirmation process for Breyer’s successor could be fraught, as the nomination of federal judges has grown increasingly partisan in recent years — a shift Republicans frequently blame on Democrats, who they accuse of treating Brett Kavanaugh unfairly during his 2018 confirmation hearings.
“Senate Republicans believe the court and the country deserve better than Senate Democrats’ routine of baseless smears and shameless distortions,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, said on Friday. “The Senate must conduct a rigorous, exhaustive review of Judge Jackson’s nomination as befits a lifetime appointment to our highest court.”
But some court watchers have said that Jackson’s confirmation just last year by a bipartisan Senate vote to the federal appeals court in Washington DC — widely seen as the second-most important court in the country — could give her a critical advantage.
Three Republicans — Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski — voted with all of the Democrats last year to confirm her to the appeals court.
Collins on Friday called Jackson “an experienced federal judge with impressive academic and legal credentials”. Graham, who had pushed for Michelle Childs, a federal trial court judge from his home state of South Carolina, to be the president’s Supreme Court pick, expressed disappointment, saying the “radical left” had “won President Biden over yet again”.
Tim Scott, the other Republican senator from South Carolina, echoed Graham’s comments, saying he was “disappointed that President Biden missed the opportunity to nominate a highly qualified judge who would have garnered widespread support”.
Jackson’s legal career has been widely regarded as impressive, spanning from serving as a clerk to Breyer on the Supreme Court to private practice and a role as a federal public defender.
Biden nominates Ketanji Brown Jackson for Supreme Court seat
Pinoy Variant