Ketanji Brown Jackson

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      ‘Judge Jackson stands on the shoulders of giants’: women of color on a day to celebrate

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      ‘Judge Jackson stands on the shoulders of giants’: women of color on a day to celebrateKetani Brown Jackson becomes the first Black female justice on US’s highest legal body after her confirmation passes 53-47 Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the US supreme court has passed the Senate and she will now become the first Black female justice on America’s highest legal body after being nominated by Joe Biden earlier this year.Jackson’s nomination has been widely praised by women of color, especially after she sustained grueling confirmation hearings at the hands of some top Republicans who seemed dedicated to political points-scoring and whose criticisms often seemed like racist dog-whistling.Here are four women of color talking about Jackson and the significance of her nomination:Kamala Harris, US vice-president“I’ll tell you what I think you know. Judge Jackson is a phenomenal jurist,” Harris said last month in Selma, Alabama, during the 57th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday”.Jackson “proves her commitment not only to public service but to equal justice and equal rights”, Harris added.“As she makes history, Judge Jackson, like us all, stands on the shoulders of giants. She and we are their legacy.”Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center“The world demands untold levels of strength from Black women on a daily basis. The perseverance Jackson held close is all too familiar to Black women across this country,” Graves wrote in a CNN op-ed last month during Jackson’s confirmation hearings.“​​We hailed her career and celebrated not only her, but also the work of countless Black women silenced, erased and excluded from the top echelon of the legal profession,” she said, adding: “This will be the legacy of her rise to the supreme court: a young Black girl, one of a generation of Black girls, joyful at the sight of new possibilities for her own life.”Ann Claire Williams, retired US circuit judge of the US court of appeals for the 7th circuitIn a statement on behalf of the American Bar Association’s standing committee on the federal judiciary, Williams wrote: “Judge Jackson has a sterling reputation for integrity. Judges and lawyers who have known her in every capacity uniformly praised her character, calling her integrity ‘beyond reproach’, ‘first rate’, and ‘impeccable’.”“Our extensive review leads us to conclude that Judge Jackson meets the highest standards of integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament,” Williams continued, granting Jackson the ABA’s highest rating.Angela Onwuachi-Willig, dean of Boston University School of Law“We don’t only get judged by our actions as individuals, all Black people get judged by our actions,” Onwuachi-Willig said in reference to Jackson’s confirmation hearings. “That’s an enormous weight. Judge Jackson was carrying that weight for hours and hours and hours, and I felt that was a human moment.”“With nearly 10 years of service as a federal judge, experience clerking for Supreme court justice Stephen Breyer and two lower-court judges, and a record of leadership on the United States Sentencing Commission, she will make an incredible supreme court justice,” Onwuachi-Willig also said in a letter, along with more than 200 other Black women law deans and professors, that urged the Senate’s confirmation of Jackson.TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtLaw (US)US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Senate judiciary committee nears vote on Ketanji Brown Jackson

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      Senate judiciary committee nears vote on Ketanji Brown JacksonCommittee vote expected to be evenly split, 11-11, forcing Democrats to ‘discharge’ the nomination The Senate judiciary committee on Monday neared a vote on the historic nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, poised to be the first Black woman confirmed to the supreme court.Following days of interrogation and debate over Jackson’s qualifications, the committee vote was expected to be evenly split, 11-11. That would force Democrats to “discharge” the nomination, delaying but not denying confirmation.Before the vote could take place, the committee adjourned to await the arrival of its 22nd member, the California Democrat Alex Padilla, whose flight to Washington was delayed.A vote to discharge Jackson’s nomination was expected as early as Monday evening. That would set up hours of additional debate on the Senate floor.Democrats and the White House hope to confirm Jackson to the lifetime position on the court before Congress recesses for the Easter holiday on Friday. The 51-year-old was confirmed by the Senate to the US court of appeals for the DC circuit last year with the support of three Republicans.Ketanji Brown Jackson to receive rare Republican vote as Collins says yesRead moreOnly one of those Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine, has committed to voting for her again.Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has said he will not support Jackson’s nomination to the supreme court​​, calling her an “activist to the core”, outside the judicial mainstream.Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has not said how she intends to vote, but is seen as one of only two more Republicans, along with Mitt Romney of Utah, who might support Jackson.If confirmed, Jackson will replace the retiring liberal justice Stephen Breyer, for whom she clerked, and would make history as the first Black woman and only the sixth woman to sit on the court in more than 200 years. Her confirmation would, however, do nothing to change the ideological balance of a court on which conservatives outnumber liberals 6-3.In his opening remarks on Monday, Dick Durbin of Illinois, the committee’s Democratic chair, praised Jackson’s “impeccable qualifications” and said her experience as a public defender would bring a “missing perspective to the court”.“This committee’s action today in nothing less than making history,” Durbin said. “I’m honored to be a part of it. I will strongly and proudly support Judge Jackson’s nomination.”Durbin also lamented Republican hostility toward Jackson, accusing senators of leveraging “vile” and “discredited” attacks on her record and character.“She stayed calm and collected. She showed dignity, grace and poise,” Durbin said. “It is unfortunate that our hearing came to that, but if there is one positive to take away from these attacks, it is that the nation got to see the temperament of a good, strong person truly ready to serve on the highest court in the land.”Many Republicans used the hearing on Monday to rehash their attacks on Jackson, accusing her of handing down lenient sentences to child sex crime offenders when she was a federal trial court judge, a claim independent factcheckers have said is baseless and lacks context.During her hearings, Jackson forcefully defended her record, telling senators these were among the most traumatic and haunting cases she dealt with and that she did her “duty to hold the defendants accountable”.Republicans also sought to portray Jackson as “soft on crime”, a line of attack dismissed outright by the American Bar Association, which testified that she was strongly qualified for the position.Republicans on the committee appear uniformly opposed to Jackson’s nomination, starting with the ranking member, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who announced he would not vote to confirm Jackson because “she and I have fundamental, different views on the role of judges and the role that they should play in our system of government”.On Monday, Graham again used his time to decry Democrats’ treatment of nominees named by Republican presidents.“If we were in charge, she would not have been before this committee,” Graham said.His point was that Republican control of the Senate would have forced Democrats to put forward a more “moderate” – in his view – nominee. But Democrats saw the comment as a plain-spoken acknowledgment of Republicans’ hardball tactics when it comes to the supreme court, after the GOP refused to let Barack Obama fill a vacancy in 2016 – an act without precedent.Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, compared proceedings on Jackson’s nomination to Festivus, the holiday celebrated on the TV series, Seinfeld.“There’s been a lot of airing of grievances,” Booker said, adding: “I’ve heard things that are just ridiculous.”During more than 30 hours of hearings last month, Jackson pledged to be an independent justice who would decide cases from a “neutral position”. She defended her record while reflecting on her personal story as the daughter of public school teachers in the segregated south.As the 22-member panel convened on Monday, Joe Biden said Jackson would “bring extraordinary qualifications, deep experience and intellect, and a rigorous judicial record to the supreme court.“She deserves to be confirmed as the next justice.”TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtUS SenateLaw (US)US politicsRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson to receive rare Republican vote as Collins says yes

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson to receive rare Republican vote as Collins says yesMaine senator says she will vote to confirm Joe Biden’s nominee: ‘There can be no question she is qualified’ The Maine senator Susan Collins will vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the US supreme court, giving Joe Biden’s nominee a rare Republican vote as she proceeds towards becoming the first Black woman ever to sit on the nine-judge panel.Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing reveals racist fears of Republicans | Steve PhillipsRead more“I have decided to support the confirmation of Judge Jackson to be a member of the supreme court,” Collins, a Republican moderate, told the New York Times after meeting the nominee a second time.“There can be no question that [Jackson] is qualified to be a supreme court justice.”The confirmation was not in doubt. Democrats need only their own 50 votes in the evenly divided Senate to put Jackson on the court, given the casting vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris. Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat from West Virginia, had already confirmed his support.But the vice-president’s tie-breaking vote has never been required to confirm a supreme court justice, making Collins’ vote at least symbolically important.Collins’ support also comes at a time of bitter partisan divide that was underscored by hostile and politically loaded questioning of Jackson led by white, hard-line Republican men, prominently including Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley.Ahead of a confirmation vote next week, other Republican moderates could follow Collins and announce support for Jackson. In particular, Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican nominee for president, has said he has not yet decided.Jackson will replace Stephen Breyer when he retires this summer. As Breyer is a member of the outmatched liberal group on the court, his replacement will not alter the 6-3 conservative majority.Republicans including the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have complained that Jackson would not take a position on calls from progressives to expand the court in order to redress its ideological balance, during confirmation hearings last week.Speaking to the Times, Collins said: “In recent years, senators on both sides of the aisle have gotten away from what I perceive to be the appropriate process for evaluating judicial nominees.“In my view, the role under the constitution assigned to the Senate is to look at the credentials, experience and qualifications of the nominee. It is not to assess whether a nominee reflects the individual ideology of a senator or would vote exactly as an individual senator would want.”Supreme court confirmations have become highly political and increasingly rancorous.In 2016, as Senate majority leader, McConnell refused even a hearing for Barack Obama’s final nominee, Merrick Garland, thereby holding a seat open in the hope it would be filled by a Republican president. Collins duly voted to confirm Donald Trump’s first nominee, Neil Gorsuch, the beneficiary of such hardball tactics.Collins also voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s second nominee, who vehemently denied accusations of sexual assault.‘You’re my star’: high points of Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearingsRead moreBut Collins voted not to confirm Amy Coney Barrett, a hardline conservative installed shortly before the 2020 presidential election in place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal lion, in stark contravention of supposed principles about confirmations close to elections laid out by McConnell four years before.During the Democratic primary in 2020, Joe Biden promised to put a Black woman on the supreme court. Some Republicans voiced opposition to such a promise, disregarding precedent including Trump’s vow to name a woman to replace Ginsburg.In 2021, Collins was one of three Republicans who voted to confirm Jackson to a federal appeals court. The other two were Lindsey Graham of South Carolina – a hostile questioner in Jackson’s supreme court hearings – and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Murkowski has not said which way she will vote this time.Explaining her vote to the Times, Collins cited Jackson’s “breadth of experience as a law clerk, attorney in private practice, federal public defender, member of the US Sentencing Commission and district court judge for more than eight years”.In a tweet, the White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, said: “Grateful to Senator Collins for giving fair, thoughtful consideration to Judge Jackson – and all of the president’s judicial nominations.”TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtUS politicsLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing reveals racist fears of Republicans | Steve Phillips

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson hearing reveals Republicans’ racist fearsSteve PhillipsRepublicans are becoming so hysterical because people like Judge Jackson pose a revolutionary threat to the status quo “Black Girl Magic” is on full display in the supreme court confirmation hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Republicans are apoplectic. The juxtaposition of Jackson’s calm, confident, professionalism with the hostile, cynical and contemptuous questioning by senators such as Texas senator Ted Cruz is an object lesson for the entire world on the ongoing dynamics of systemic racism in the United States.Rather than do their constitutional duty of engage with a prospective supreme court justice on the pressing legal issues of the day, the Republican committee members have opted to throw racist red meat to their rabid white supporters who are gripped by fear of people of color. Cruz led the charge with his attacks on critical race theory, asking Jackson whether she agrees “that babies are racist” and trying to paint the judge as a dangerous person who would force white children to learn about racism.In so doing, Cruz was working from a tried and tired playbook that seeks to dramatize anti-racist demands in ways that fuel white fears about the consequences of Black people attaining positions of power. There is a long history in this country of the leaders of white people trying to force Black people to denounce anti-racist movements as a condition for entry into the highest precincts of power (Cruz is Latino, but his base is largely white). In 2008, the media tried to force Barack Obama to denounce his pastor Jeremiah Wright’s statements forcefully condemning white supremacy. Two decades earlier, Jesse Jackson was dogged by demands that he distance himself from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The point of said attacks is to try to weaken support for the Black person one way or another. Either they distance themselves from Black leaders and movements, thereby diminishing Black enthusiasm, or they refuse to renounce anti-racist voices, and that refusal is then used to scare white people.Cruz and his ilk gravitate to such tactics because white fears about Black people have defined politics in this country for centuries. One of the Republican questioners of Judge Jackson was South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, representative of a state that has been in the forefront of efforts to whip white people into a frenzy about the prospects of Black equality. In 1712, the South Carolina legislature passed the “Slave Laws” – legislation designed to control the behavior of “Negroes and other slaves [who] are of barbarous, wild, savage natures”. South Carolina’s leaders were so extreme in stoking white fears that the state was the first to secede from the Union and turn to violence after Abraham Lincoln’s election on an anti-slavery platform in 1860. Graham’s predecessor, Strom Thurmond, ran for president in 1948, defiantly declaring that, “there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the n—-r race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches!”Today’s Republicans are becoming so hysterical because people like Judge Jackson pose a revolutionary threat to the status quo in that they reveal the ubiquity of Black brilliance. Cruz, Graham and their fellow modern-day Confederates know instinctively that as the public sees how many amazing Black women there are, it becomes much harder to explain why most of the powerful positions in this country are still held by white men. In 233 years, there hasn’t been a single Black woman smart enough to sit on the supreme court? The notion is absurd. So, if it’s not lack of talent, then it must be something else. Like racism and sexism. Exposing this reality is very dangerous to a political party whose power rests on exploiting that racism and sexism (all the while denying it exists).The very fact that Jackson’s nomination is historic and not routine is a profound indictment of the United States of America. Hour after hour, question after question, Judge Jackson – secure in the knowledge that she is simply the latest talented Black woman and not the first – is calmly, confidently and politely taking a wrecking ball to the myth that America is a meritocracy. And the implications of that scare the Republicans to death.
      Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color and author of Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority. He is a Guardian US columnist
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