Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, the federal appeals court judge who President Joe Biden is set to appoint as the first black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, has a wide range of experience, including representing low-income criminal defendants.
Jackson, 51, whom Biden last year appointed to the influential court of appeals in Washington, early in her career served as a clerk of the Supreme Court for Justice Stephen Breyer, whose retirement, announced in January, opens a vacancy in the country’s highest judiciary.
As a member of the federal judiciary, Jackson has earned the respect of both liberals and conservatives and is well-connected in Washington’s close-knit legal community. Progressives chose her nomination over other leading candidates: U.S. District Court Judge J. Michelle Childs of South Carolina and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Krueger.
Last June, the Senate voted 53-44 to confirm Jackson as a member of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
In her short time on the appeals court, she drafted two majority opinions, including one in favor of public sector unions challenging a ruling under former Republican President Donald Trump’s administration that curtailed their bargaining power.
She was part of a three-judge panel that ruled in December against Trump’s proposal to prevent White House documents from being handed over to a House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack by a mob of his supporters. The Supreme Court on January 20 refused to block the decision.
Jackson also served on the three-judge panel that last August refused to block the Biden administration’s COVID-19-related eviction moratorium, a decision later overturned by the Supreme Court.
“PRESIDENTS ARE NOT KINGS”
Jackson previously received Senate confirmation in 2013 after former Democratic President Barack Obama nominated her to serve as a federal district judge in Washington. In her eight years in office, she handled a number of high-profile cases, including one in which she ruled that Trump’s former top White House attorney, Donald McGahn, had to submit to a congressional subpoena to testify about Trump’s potential obstruction. special prosecutor’s investigation.
“The main takeaway from recorded American history over the past 250 years is that presidents are not kings,” Jackson wrote.
The decision was appealed, and an agreement was reached after Biden took office. McGahn testified behind closed doors.
Hon. Sri Srinivasan (left), Hon. Judge David Tatel, sitting on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, center, and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, sitting on the US District Court for the District of Columbia, enter the ceremonial courtroom of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Permanent current
In other decisions, Jackson in 2019 blocked Trump’s plan to expedite the expulsion of some immigrants, and in 2018 opposed her administration’s proposal to ease the firing of federal employees — the decisions were later overturned by the appeals court where she now serves.
Biden promised during the 2020 presidential election campaign to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court. It has had only two black judges, both men: Clarence Thomas, appointed in 1991 and still serving, and Thurgood Marshall, who retired in 1991 and died in 1993.
During her current job approval hearing in April 2021, Jackson said her experience, both personal and professional, would “benefit” the bench, although she rejected suggestions from Republican senators that the race could influence her decisions. .
“I may have lived life differently than some of my colleagues because of who I am,” Jackson said.
Three Republican senators joined Biden’s fellow Democrats in voting to confirm Jackson.
Jackson will become the sixth woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court, joining current members Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, retired Sandra Day O’Connor, and the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
‘PROFESSIONAL BUM’
Biden sought to bring more women and minorities, as well as a wider range of people, into the federal judiciary, which is dominated by lawyers who were corporate lawyers or prosecutors.
Jackson grew up in Miami and attended Harvard University, where she once participated in a drama class with future Hollywood star Matt Damon before graduating from Harvard Law School in 1996.
Jackson in 2017 described herself as a “professional drifter” early in her legal career, moving from job to job in search of work-life balance while raising a family. She and husband Patrick Jackson, a surgeon, have two daughters.
From 2005 to 2007, she worked as a state-paid court-appointed attorney to represent criminal defendants who could not afford an attorney. Among her clients was Khee Ali Gul, an Afghan prisoner at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The United States sent him back to Afghanistan in 2014 when she was no longer involved in the case.
Jackson worked from 2002 to 2004 for Kenneth Feinberg, a lawyer known for overseeing compensation programs, including a program for victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
She also had two separate terms on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which directs criminal sentencing judges, including a four-year term that began in 2010 as a Senate-confirmed vice chair.
In 2020, Jackson paid tribute to Breuer during a virtual conference they both participated in, saying that he “opened the doors of opportunity” not only with his court decisions, but by hiring a diverse group of lawyers.
“As a descendant of slaves,” Jackson added, “let me say that, Judge (Breuer), your concern in this regard has changed the world.”
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is married to a Washington, DC surgeon and has two children.
FAMILY VALUES
Jackson has personal experience with the federal system.
Her distant uncle, Thomas Brown Jr., was serving a life sentence in Florida for a non-violent drug offense. He wrote her a letter asking for help in his case.
He was sentenced to life in prison under the “three strikes” law. On Jackson’s recommendation, the powerful law firm Wilmer Hale took on his case pro bono, and years later, President Barack Obama commuted the sentence.
When Obama appointed her to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, she helped rewrite the guidelines to reduce the recommended sentences 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.
According to her, her parents named her “Ketanji Oniika” to express pride in her African heritage. Later, her father became an attorney on the Miami-Dade County School Board and her mother became the principal of a public school with advanced studies.
She and her husband, Patrick Jackson, a surgeon at the Georgetown University MedStar Hospital in Washington DC, have two daughters.
She is related by marriage to former Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan. Jackson’s husband is the twin brother of Ryan’s son-in-law.
“Janna and I are incredibly happy for Ketanji and her entire family,” Ryan wrote on Friday. “Our policies may differ, but my praise for Ketanji’s intelligence, character, and integrity is unequivocal.”
– Reuters and Associated Press