Biden Picks Jackson for Supreme Court, Putting Her on a Path to History

(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden said he will nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, a historic selection that would add a fresh liberal voice with new life experiences to the court without changing its conservative tilt.

Jackson is “one of our nation’s brightest legal minds and will be an exceptional Justice,” Biden said on Twitter. He will introduce her at a White House event later Friday.

Jackson, 51, is a federal appeals court judge in Washington who once served as a public defender, a job no justice has ever held, and on the U.S. Sentencing Commission. She worked as a law clerk to the man she would replace, the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, 83.

The nomination will be Biden’s first to a court whose conservative majority is poised to make sweeping changes to the law, potentially expanding gun rights, slashing federal regulatory power and overturning the constitutional right to abortion. Although Jackson won’t affect the court’s ideological balance, she could reinforce the three-justice liberal wing and serve for decades.

Biden selected Jackson over a field that included California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger and U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs.

If successful, Jackson’s nomination could provide a needed political boost for Biden as he battles slumping approval ratings and the prospect of a Republican takeover of Congress in the November mid-term election. 

Biden will have to get the nomination through a 50-50 Senate that Democrats control only because of Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote. Jackson won confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last year with support from three Republicans: Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

But Graham said in a tweet that Jackson’s selection would mean that “the radical Left has won President Biden over yet again.” Graham had voiced support for Childs, also from South Carolina.

Collins, in a statement, called Jackson “an experienced federal judge with impressive academic and legal credentials” and said she looks forward to her confirmation hearing and having a personal meeting with her.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and members of his leadership team so far have shown no signs they want to engage in a heated partisan fight over Biden’s nominee. “We believe a Supreme Court nominee ought to be respectfully treated, thoroughly vetted and then voted upon,” McConnell said at an appearance Tuesday in his home state of Kentucky.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Friday that Jackson will receive a “prompt hearing” in the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming weeks.

The selection of a sitting federal judge will speed the confirmation process because the pick has already been through the rigorous background checks and vetting required in the Senate, a point that Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin has said he was stressing to the White House in recent weeks. Durbin said last week his goal is to confirm the pick in the full Senate by April 9, the start of a two-week congressional Easter recess.

A recent stroke that hospitalized Democratic Senator Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico underscored the fragility of Democrats’ majority in the 50-50 Senate, although Lujan is expected to be back in the Senate in time to vote on the confirmation.

Obama Praise

The nomination drew praise from former President Barack Obama, who appointed Jackson to be vice-chair of the Sentencing Commission in 2010 and then to be a federal district judge in Washington in 2013. 

“Judge Jackson has already inspired young Black women like my daughters to set their sights higher, and her confirmation will help them believe they can be anything they want to be,” Obama said in a statement. 

Jackson, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, got the nomination less than a year after being appointed by Biden to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a powerful court where three current justices once served. Jackson issued her first opinion on that court in a Feb. 1 labor case.

Biden’s announcement came even as Jackson heard arguments in three D.C. Circuit cases Friday morning. Judges nominated to the Supreme Court generally stop taking part in lower court matters, though Jackson may be an exception given that Breyer doesn’t plan to retire until the Supreme Court’s term ends in late June or early July.

As a federal district judge, a position she held for eight years, Jackson was involved in several high-profile cases involving then-President Donald Trump.

She ruled in 2019 that former White House counsel Don McGahn had to testify at a House impeachment hearing despite Trump’s objection. “Presidents are not kings,” she wrote in her 120-page decision.

Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Miami, where her father worked as a lawyer for the county school board and her mother was the principal of a magnet school.

‘Professional Odyssey’

Her career has been a varied one, including stints at several large law firms. In a 2017 speech, she described her early career as a “professional odyssey of epic proportions” as she struggled to balance work with family life. She and her husband, a Washington surgeon, have two daughters. 

She worked as a federal public defender in Washington from 2005 to 2007. Some critics have seized on her work in representing Khi Ali Gul, an inmate being held as an enemy combatant at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

She told the Senate Judiciary Committee last year that, at the time she represented Gul, her brother was serving in Iraq as a U.S. Army infantryman. “I was keenly and personally mindful of the tragic and deplorable circumstances that gave rise to the U.S. government’s apprehension and detention of the persons who were secured at Guantanamo Bay,” she said in a written response to questions posed as part of her appeals court confirmation process.

If Jackson is confirmed, each of the last two justices to retire -- Breyer and Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2018 -- would have been replaced by a former law clerk. Kennedy’s seat was filled by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

During Jackson’s 2012 confirmation hearing to be a district judge, the city’s delegate to Congress said Breyer urged a vetting committee to recommend her.

“She is great, she is brilliant,” Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton quoted Breyer as saying. “She is a mix of common sense, thoughtfulness. She is decent. She is very smart and has the mix of skills and experience we need on the bench.”

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