Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing for a seat on the Supreme Court begins Monday. What do we know about Joe Biden’s nominee for America’s highest court?
, will retire at the end of the court’s current term. While campaigning for president, Joe Biden pledged to put the first black woman on the court. On February 25th he announced that Ketanji Brown Jackson would be his nominee. Ms Jackson was a district-court judge in the District of Columbia from 2013 to June 2021, when she was confirmed by the Senate to the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
Ms Jackson, 51, earned two degrees from Harvard before entering private practice. She then served as a public defender, representing poor defendants before the appeals court on which she sits. In 2010 she became vice-chair of the Sentencing Commission, where she revised harsh penalties for crack-cocaine offences, which disproportionately affect black Americans. This was not an abstract injustice. When she was a teen, her uncle was imprisoned for life for a minor drug crime.
Two years ago her rejection of Don McGahn’s claim that, as chief counsel to then-president Donald Trump, he could be directed not to testify before Congress raised her profile. “Presidents are not kings,” she wrote, and “do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control.” In line with Ms Jackson's ruling, Mr McGahn testified before the House Judiciary Committee last year as to whether Mr Trump may have obstructed Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
It is fitting for Ms Jackson to replace Mr Breyer, since she clerked for him. Democrats in the Senate will want to move swiftly, and before the mid-term elections in November, when they risk losing their majority. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, has threatened to block any Biden nominee should Republicans take the chamber—no idle threat, after he scuttled Merrick Garland’s nomination in 2016.
But confirmation could be tricky. Eight years ago the Senate confirmed Ms Jackson to the district-court unanimously. Times have changed. Just three Republicans approved her recent promotion. Even so slim a margin would be enough.
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