Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is President Biden’s candidate for the Supreme Court
Ketanji Brown Jackson, a judge on the Federal Court of Appeals whom President Joe Biden is ready to nominate as the first black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court, has a diverse range of court experiences, including a stay representing low-income defendants.
Jackson, 51, who Biden appointed to an influential Washington-based court of appeals last year, began his career as a Supreme Court official for Judge Stephen Brier, whose retirement, announced in January, opens a vacancy in the country’s top judiciary. .
As a member of the federal judiciary, Jackson has earned the respect of both liberals and conservatives and has good connections in the cohesive legal community in Washington. Progressives prefer her nomination to other leading candidates: South Carolina-based U.S. District Court Judge J. Michelle Childs and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Krueger.
The Senate voted 53-44 in June last year to confirm Jackson as a member of the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
During her brief time in the Court of Appeals, she authored two majority opinions, including one in favor of public sector unions challenging a decree issued during the administration of former Republican President Donald Trump that limits their bargaining power.
She was part of a three-judge panel that ruled in December against Trump’s attempts to prevent the White House’s recordings from being handed over to a House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by a crowd of supporters. On January 20, the Supreme Court refused to block the ruling.
Jackson was also part of a three-judge panel that refused last August to block the COVID-19 moratorium on the eviction of the Biden administration’s housing eviction, a decision that was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
“PRESIDENTS ARE NOT KINGS”
Earlier, Jackson won Senate confirmation in 2013 after former Democratic President Barack Obama nominated her as a Washington-based federal district judge. In her eight years in this role, she has dealt with a number of high-profile cases, including one in which she ruled that former Trump White House Attorney General Donald McGann must comply with a subpoena from Congress to testify about potential obstruction of Trump. of a special investigation by the prosecutor.
“The main conclusion from the last 250 years of recorded American history is that presidents are not kings,” Jackson wrote.
The decision was appealed, and an agreement was reached after Biden took office. McGann testified behind closed doors.
He, Mr. Sri Srinivasan, on the left, the Honorable Judge David Tatel, who is sitting in the U.S. District Court of Appeals, in the center, and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is sitting in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, enter the ceremonial courtroom. U.S. Court of Justice for DC Circuit
In other decisions, Jackson in 2019 blocked Trump’s plan to speed up the removal of certain immigrants and in 2018 spoke out against his administration’s proposal to facilitate the dismissal of federal officials – decisions later overturned by the appellate court. she now serves.
Biden promised to appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court during the 2020 presidential election campaign. There were only two black judges, both men: Clarence Thomas, who was appointed in 1991 and still a clerk, and Targud Marshall, who retired in 1991 and died in 1993.
During a hearing in confirmation of her current job in April 2021, Jackson said her experience, both personal and professional, would “bring value” to the bench, although she rejected suggestions from Republican senators that race can influence her decisions.
“I lived life maybe differently than some of my colleagues because of who I am,” Jackson said.
Three Republican senators joined Biden’s fellow Democrats in the vote to confirm Jackson.
Jackson will become the sixth woman to ever serve on the Supreme Court, joining current members Amy Connie Barrett, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, retired Sandra Day O’Connor and the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
“PROFESSIONAL BOMBER”
Biden seeks to attract more women and minorities and a wider range of experience in a federal judiciary dominated by lawyers who have been corporate lawyers or prosecutors.
Jackson grew up in Miami and attended Harvard University, where she once shared a drama class with future Hollywood star Matt Damon before graduating from Harvard Law School in 1996.
In 2017, Jackson described himself as a “professional tramp” earlier in his legal career, moving from job to job while seeking a work-life balance while raising a family. She and her husband, surgeon Patrick Jackson, have two daughters.
From 2005 to 2007, she worked as a court-appointed lawyer paid by the government to represent defendants who could not afford a lawyer. Among her clients was Khi Ali Gul, an Afghan detainee at the US naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba. The United States sent him back to Afghanistan in 2014, when she was no longer involved.
Jackson worked from 2002 to 2004 for Kenneth Feinberg, a lawyer known for overseeing compensation programs, including for victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
She also held two separate positions on the U.S. Punishment Commission, which issues judges’ guidance on sentencing, including a four-year tenure beginning in 2010 as vice president, confirmed by the Senate.
Jackson paid tribute to Breyer in 2020 during a virtual conference in which they both attended, saying he was “opening the door to opportunities” not only through his court decisions, but also by hiring a diverse group of lawyers.
“As a descendant of slaves,” Jackson added, “let me just say that, Justis (Breyer), your thinking on this has made the world a difference.”
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is married to a surgeon from Washington and has two children
FAMILY ISSUES
Jackson has personal experience with the federal system.
Her distant uncle, Thomas Brown Jr., was serving a life sentence in Florida for a nonviolent drug crime. He wrote to her asking for help in his case.
He was sentenced to life in prison for “three blows”. Following Jackson’s referral, the powerful law firm of Wilmer Hale took over his case pro bono, and President Barack Obama commuted his sentence years later.
When Obama appointed her to the U.S. Punishment Commission, she helped rewrite guidelines to reduce the recommended penalties for drug-related crimes.
Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., to two public school teachers who moved her family to the Miami area when she was a child.
Her parents, she said, named her “Ketanji Oniika” to express their pride in their African descent. Her father would later become a lawyer on the Miami-Dade County School Board, and her mother would become the director of a public school for magnets.
She and her husband, Patrick Jackson, a surgeon at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., have two daughters.
She is related by marriage to former House Speaker Paul Ryan. Jackson’s husband is Ryan’s son-in-law’s twin brother.
“Jana and I are incredibly happy for Ketanji and her whole family,” Ryan tweeted on Friday. “Our policy may differ, but my praise of Ketanji’s intellect, her character and her integrity is unequivocal.”
– Reuters and Associated Press