Ketanji Brown Jackson Becomes The First Black Woman To Sit On The US Supreme Court As She’s Confirmed As The 116th Justice In American History

FILE PHOTO: Ketanji Brown Jackson, nominated to be a U.S. Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit, is sworn in to testify before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on pending judicial nominations on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., April 28, 2021. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/Pool/File Photo

The Senate was set to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as the 116th Supreme Court justice on Thursday, making history in diversifying the bench while leaving unchanged the legal trajectory of a court where conservatives now dominate.


Judge Jackson, 51 years old, will be the first Black woman to join the Supreme Court, fulfilling a campaign pledge by President Biden. Her expected confirmation has been celebrated as a groundbreaking moment by her backers and even some of her detractors, while the thin margin of the vote is set to underline how partisan the confirmation process has become.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said it was “truly a joyous day,” in a speech as the Senate convened Thursday morning.

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“This milestone should have happened generations ago—generations ago. But we are always trodding on a path towards a more perfect union,” he said.

Several hours after Mr. Schumer spoke, Judge Jackson cleared a final procedural hurdle in the evenly divided Senate, 53-47, with her confirmation vote scheduled for later in the afternoon. She is set to take her seat on the high court after liberal Justice Stephen Breyer retires this summer.

All 50 senators who caucus with Democrats were expected to vote to confirm Judge Jackson, along with three Republicans. Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have said that while they don’t expect to agree with all of Judge Jackson’s decisions, they believe she had the qualifications and temperament for the job. Other Republicans cited Judge Jackson’s judicial philosophy and sentencing record in opposing her confirmation.

Judge Jackson would join the liberal bloc of a high court split 6-3 in favor of the conservatives. In late 2020, the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg opened a seat that then-President Donald Trump filled with Amy Coney Barrett, a favorite of religious conservatives, shortly before the November election turned power over to Democrats.

Since then, the conservative wing has asserted its dominance, taking on liberal precedents that the right for years has sought to revisit. The court has heard arguments in cases regarding women’s right to end unwanted pregnancies, first recognized in the 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade, and New York state’s century-old limits on carrying concealed weapons.

Those cases are expected to be decided before July, with retiring Justice Breyer casting his last votes and filing his final opinions after 28 years on the court.

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In the next term, the court is set to consider several other potential blockbuster cases. Justices plan to hear cases on whether selective colleges can consider race in their admissions process and if website designers and other artisans can disregard civil-rights laws barring discrimination against same-sex couples.

At her confirmation hearing, Judge Jackson said she would sit out the admissions case involving Harvard College, as she serves on one of her alma mater’s governing boards; a second case, currently set to be argued jointly, concerns the University of North Carolina.

Ketanji Brown Jackson (2016-2022) Headshots and cocktail hour with overseers at Loeb House at Harvard University. Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer

Since entering the White House, Mr. Biden has pushed to diversify the federal judiciary in terms of race, ethnicity, gender and professional experience. Judge Jackson would be the sixth woman to serve on the Supreme Court and the third Black justice in the nation’s history.

Judge Jackson clerked for Justice Breyer after graduating magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1992 and from Harvard Law School in 1996. She served as an assistant federal public defender and as the vice chairwoman of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency that provides sentencing guidelines for the federal courts.

She then served as a U.S. District Court judge before being elevated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last year, to the seat vacated by now-Attorney General Merrick Garland. Mr. Garland was nominated to the high court in 2016 by then-President Barack Obama but the GOP-controlled Senate declined to consider him.

While most Republican senators agreed that Judge Jackson was well qualified, they said they couldn’t support her because they considered her judicial philosophy to be too liberal.

One Judiciary Committee member, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, said while he opposed Judge Jackson’s confirmation Thursday, he recognized the moment as historic and a long time coming. “That’s at least one aspect of it that I feel good about,” Mr. Tillis said. “But again, my position on her had more to do with where she would be with regard to legislating from the bench…I thought she was an extraordinary person.”

Many Republicans also sharply criticized Judge Jackson’s record, particularly the sentences she handed down in child-pornography cases, which they said were too lenient. Federal judges across the country typically issue sentences below federal guidelines in cases that involve an offender possessing, receiving or distributing child pornography, rather than producing it, according to a report published by the Sentencing Commission last year.

Republicans also criticized Judge Jackson’s work as a public defender, when she was assigned to represent Guantanamo Bay detainees and other accused criminals.

Several Republican senators who are considered future presidential contenders portrayed Judge Jackson as soft on child predators and sympathetic to terrorists, drawing condemnation from Democrats who said the lawmakers were breaking their party’s pledge to ensure a respectful confirmation process.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) accused her of “a pattern of letting child-porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) repeatedly interrupted the judge during her testimony and accused her of refusing to answer questions about her sentencing record.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) in a speech on the Senate floor this week, said Judge Jackson “will coddle criminals and terrorists, and she will twist or ignore the law to reach the result that she wants.” He suggested she would have defended Nazis at the Nuremberg trials.

Democratic senators said Republicans distorted Judge Jackson’s record for political gain, and the White House accused them of pandering to followers of conspiracy theories like QAnon with the focus on child-porn sentencing. Democrats pointed out that Judge Jackson has close relatives who have served in law enforcement, and that her nomination has received public support from the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

“I think it’s unfortunate that some of my colleagues are more focused on playing to their base than they are to taking seriously their work of advice and consent” on Supreme Court nominees, said Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.).

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) said Judge Jackson’s experience as a public defender should be seen as an asset to the high court.

“Judge Jackson was helping support our constitutional ideals every time she stood up as a public defender on behalf of people who had been accused of crimes,” Ms. Warren said. “She will bring perspective to the bench that it has never had.”

Republicans defended their approach, saying that their party had treated Judge Jackson more respectfully than Democrats treated Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who faced allegations of sexual assault during his hearings, which he denied.

“What they did to Brett Kavanaugh was a total witch hunt. And if they don’t regret that now, then, you know, they haven’t learned their lesson,” said Mr. Hawley, who was the first GOP senator to zero in on Judge Jackson’s sentencing record in child-pornography cases. “So listen, I mean, they should be grateful to us that we focused on the record. What they wanted was a rubber stamp.

Photo Credit: Getty 

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