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U.S. President Joe Biden said on Friday he’s nominating Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court, setting in motion a process for the first African American woman to sit on its bench
Washington, U.S. | Xinhua | Partisan battles are brewing on U.S. Capitol following President Joe Biden’s announcement of his pick for the first African American woman on the nation’s Supreme Court.
Republicans have immediately gone after Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, over things like her support from progressive and left-wing groups and her elite educational background.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell underlined in a statement on Friday that he voted against confirming Jackson to the D.C. Circuit last year.
McConnell alleged “Jackson was the favored choice of far-left dark-money groups” and vowed to carefully review the nomination “during the vigorous and thorough Senate process.”
Biden announced his nomination of Jackson to the Supreme Court from the White House on Friday and introduced her as “a daughter of former public school teachers, a proven consensus builder, an accomplished lawyer, a distinguished jurist.”
He stressed that the U.S. government and courts “haven’t looked like America” for too long, while expressing hope that elevating Jackson to the Supreme Court could “inspire all young people to believe that they can one day serve their country at the highest level.”
Since the Supreme Court was established in the United States in 1789, 115 justices have served on the bench. Of them, 108 were white men.
Jackson, 51, has been viewed as a potential candidate for the Supreme Court after being confirmed by the Senate last year with bipartisan support to the D.C. Circuit, often referred to as the second most powerful court in the United States.
Born in D.C. but raised in Miami, Jackson received her law degree from Harvard University and graduated cum laude in 1996. Earlier in her legal career, she worked as an assistant federal public defender in D.C. and served as vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission for four years.
Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the three Republicans siding with Democrats to approve Jackson to serve on the D.C. Circuit, appeared to be displeased by Biden’s decision not to nominate Judge J. Michelle Childs of the U.S. District Court in South Carolina.
“If media reports are accurate, and Judge Jackson has been chosen as the Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Breyer, it means the radical Left has won President Biden over yet again,” Graham, a veteran lawmaker from South Carolina, tweeted on Friday.
“I expect a respectful but interesting hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee,” he suggested. “The Harvard-Yale train to the Supreme Court continues to run unabated.”
Biden’s promise to select an African American woman for the Supreme Court went back to early races of the Democratic Party presidential primaries in 2020.
During a debate day before voting began in South Carolina, where six in 10 Democratic voters were African American, Biden said he’s “looking forward to making sure there’s a black woman on the Supreme Court” to ensure various representation.
The former U.S. vice president eventually won a commanding victory in the Palmetto State’s primary, which turned his campaign around and arguably set him on a path to win the White House race.
Congressman James Clyburn, who reportedly suggested Biden pledge to put the first African American woman on the Supreme Court before the critical primary, had advocated Childs, who attended public schools rather than Ivy League institutions, to get the nomination.
“I am very, very concerned that we take on this elitist kind of atmosphere when we pretend that the only way you can demonstrate leadership qualifications is to go to certain schools… I don’t think that’s right,” Clyburn said last month, who is the third-highest ranking House Democrat and an influential African American legislator.
Nevertheless, Clyburn praised Biden’s Supreme Court choice in a statement on Friday and said Childs “continues to make all South Carolinians proud.”
The progress to vet Jackson in the Senate has begun, according to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair and Democrat Dick Durbin, with the hope of hearings held in the coming weeks and a confirmation vote “as soon as possible.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor has recently delivered a warning about intensifying partisanship that she says puts the Supreme Court’s independence on the brink of crisis.
“As norms of the nomination process are broken, more senators, congressional representatives, governors, mayors, local politicians, and the media question the legitimacy of the court,” Sotomayor said in a virtual appearance for New York University Law School earlier this month. “The threat is greater and unprecedented than any time in our history.”
“The more partisan the voting becomes, the less belief that the public is likely to have that Congress is making a merit-based or qualifications-based assessment of judicial nominees,” the liberal justice said on the Senate confirmation process.
Biden’s nomination of Jackson for the Supreme Court came about a month after Justice Stephen Breyer, a longtime liberal, said that he is set to retire this summer after nearly three decades on the bench. Jackson clerked for Breyer in the 1999-2000 term.
Court watchers have argued Jackson is expected to vote very similarly to Breyer. Her ascension won’t change the Supreme Court’s ideological balance, in which conservatives have a 6-3 majority over liberals.
This year, the Supreme Court will rule on cases involving a series of major issues, including abortion, affirmative action and gun control.
It requires a simple majority of votes in the 100-seat Senate to confirm Jackson to be the next Supreme Court justice.
The Senate is evenly split between the two parties. Democrats can approve the nomination without Republican support, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting a tie-breaking vote.
The Supreme Court is the final appellate court of the U.S. judicial system, with the power to review and overturn lower court decisions, and is also generally the final interpreter of federal law, including the country’s constitution.
The justices have life tenure and can serve until they die, resign, retire or are impeached and removed from office.
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Xinhua
