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Ketanji Brown Jackson makes history as first Black woman confirmed to US supreme court
Ketanji Brown Jackson makes history as first Black woman confirmed to US supreme courtJackson confirmed 53 votes to 47, and will become first Black woman to serve in court’s more than 200-year history01:12Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal appeals court judge, was confirmed to the supreme court on Thursday, overcoming a rancorous Senate approval process and earning bipartisan approval to become the first Black woman to serve as a justice on the high court in its more than 200-year history.After weeks of private meetings and days of public testimony, marked by intense sparring over judicial philosophy and personal reflections on race in America, Jackson earned narrow – but notable – bipartisan support to become the 116th justice of the supreme court. The vote was 53 to 47, with all Democrats in favor. They were joined by three moderate Republicans, senators Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, who defied deep opposition within their party to support Joe Biden’s nominee. Their support was a welcome result for the White House, which had been intent on securing a bipartisan confirmation.Ketanji Brown Jackson poised to make history as first Black female supreme court justice – liveRead moreJackson, who currently serves on the US court of appeals for the DC circuit, will replace Stephen Breyer, 83, the most senior member of the court’s liberal bloc. Breyer, for whom Jackson clerked early in her legal career, said he intends to retire from the court this summer.At 51, Jackson is young enough to serve on the court for decades. Her ascension, however, will do little to tilt the ideological balance of the high court, dominated by a 6-3 conservative majority. But it does mean for the first time in the court’s history that white men are in the minority.Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to serve as US vice-president, presided over the Senate vote as Jackson became the first Black woman to join the supreme court, underscoring the historic nature of her confirmation. Harris called for the final vote on Jackson’s nomination with a smile on her face, and the chamber broke into loud applause when the judge was confirmed.“Today, we are taking a giant, bold and important step on the well-trodden path to fulfilling our country’s founding promises,” Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said just before the final vote. “This is a great moment for Judge Jackson. But it is an even greater moment for America as we rise to a more perfect union.”The White House has announced that Biden, Harris and Jackson will deliver remarks on Friday to celebrate the confirmation. Jackson and Biden watched the final Senate vote together in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.Biden shared a photo taken with Jackson at the White House, saying on Twitter: “Judge Jackson’s confirmation was a historic moment for our nation. We’ve taken another step toward making our highest court reflect the diversity of America. She will be an incredible justice, and I was honored to share this moment with her.”Judge Jackson’s confirmation was a historic moment for our nation. We’ve taken another step toward making our highest court reflect the diversity of America. She will be an incredible Justice, and I was honored to share this moment with her. pic.twitter.com/K8SAh25NL5— President Biden (@POTUS) April 7, 2022
Assailing Jackson’s record, but acknowledging Republicans did not have the votes to stop her confirmation, minority leader Mitch McConnell implored the judge to embrace the textualist approach of conservative justices.“The soon-to-be justice can either satisfy her radical fan club or help preserve the judiciary that Americans need, but not both,” McConnell said ahead of the vote on Thursday. “I’m afraid the nominee’s record tells us which is likely, but I hope judge Jackson proves me wrong.”Her confirmation to the lifetime post represents the fulfillment of a promise Biden made to his supporters at the nadir of his 2020 campaign for president, when he vowed to nominate the first Black woman to the supreme court, if elected president and a vacancy arose. The opportunity presented itself earlier this year, at another low point for Biden, with momentous domestic and foreign challenges weighing on his presidency.During the public hearings, Jackson vowed to be an independent justice who would seek to ensure that the words inscribed on the marbled supreme court building – Equal Justice Under the Law – were a “reality and not just an ideal”. With her parents and daughters present, Jackson recounted for the Senate judiciary committee her family’s generational journey, as the daughter of public school teachers raised in the segregated south who would rise to become a justice on a court that once denied Black Americans citizenship.Yet any hope by the White House that Jackson’s historic nomination might defuse some of the bitter partisanship that senators lament has turned the process into a “circus” quickly evaporated.With an eye to the November midterm elections, Republicans led an aggressive campaign against the judge during her confirmation hearings and in conservative media, raising questions about her record in an effort to paint her as an “activist judge” who is soft on crime. They used the confirmation proceedings to air conservative grievances about past supreme court nominations and to wage culture war battles over critical race theory, crime and transgender women in sports.Couched in thinly coded appeals to racism and the far-right fringes with nods to the QAnon conspiracy theory, some Republicans accused Jackson of being too lenient on child sexual abuse offenders, claims she forcefully rebutted “as a mother and a judge”. Legal experts have said her decisions in such criminal cases were within the mainstream while independent factcheckers concluded that the attacks were misleading and a distortion of her record.Democrats, and the handful of Republicans who supported her, praised her qualifications and demeanor, and in particular the restraint she showed during some stinging exchanges with conservative senators. They sought to defend her record, noting that her sentencing record was within the mainstream of the federal judiciary, while emphasizing the support she had earned from within the legal community, including among conservative justices, and her endorsement from the Fraternal Order of Police, which cited her family’s law enforcement background.In a mark of just how polarizing the process of confirming a supreme court nominee has become, the Senate judiciary committee deadlocked along party lines over her nomination. The resulting tie prompted Democrats to execute a rare procedural maneuver to “discharge” her nomination from the committee to the floor, with a vote by the full Senate. The NAACP said the vote by 11 Republicans against Jackson’s nomination was a “stain” on the committee.The final Senate vote on her confirmation was among the closest in supreme court history.A graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law School, Jackson served on the independent US sentencing commission, an agency that develops sentencing guidelines, before becoming a federal judge.While she shares an elite background with the other justices, her work as a public defender sets her apart. The last justice with experience representing criminal defendants was Thurgood Marshall, the towering civil rights lawyer who became the first Black member of the supreme court.TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtLaw (US)US politicsUS SenatenewsReuse this content More - in US Politics
Ketanji Brown Jackson to receive rare Republican vote as Collins says yes
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 says Roe v Wade ‘the settled law of the supreme court’ – live
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In response to Hawley’s insinuations that she was not tough enough on defendants in child sexual abuse cases, Jackson has explained in detail how sentencing works, saying, “What a judge has to do is determine how to sentence defendants proportionately consistent with the elements that the statutes include, with the requirements Congress has set forward … Judges are doing the work of assessing in each case a number of factors that are set forward by Congress, all against the backdrop of heinous criminal behavior … and Congress has given judges factors to consider.”
Jackson said she has to consider the facts and the recommendations of government and the probation department in sentencing, adding, “You’re questioning whether or not I take them seriously or if I have some reason to handle them in a different way than my peers or in a different way than other cases, but I assure you I do not.”
Hawley said: “I am questioning your discretion and judgment.” He asked her why she was not tougher on an 18-year-old in a case involving child sexual abuse images.
Jackson explained that she was following guidelines and responding to specific facts in the case, and sentenced him to three months in federal prison.5.31pm EDT
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Josh Hawley, Republican senator from Missouri, started his questions with detailed descriptions of child sexual abuse cases and accusing Jackson of not being tough enough on offenders. Here’s the response from a White House spokesperson, saying Halwey’s remarks are “embarrassing” and a signal to QAnon conspiracy theorists:
Andrew Bates
(@AndrewJBates46)
Hawley’s embarrassing, QAnon-signaling smear has been fact checked by: @washingtonpost, @nytimes, @AP, @CNN, @ABC, and @NRO:https://t.co/JDHAWH7l3dhttps://t.co/JbPnmE7lbIhttps://t.co/8DuoUg80hGhttps://t.co/fA4hUmeqGyhttps://t.co/fA4hUmeqGyhttps://t.co/UVCtmAImJ2March 22, 2022
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Martin Pengelly
Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri, is now questioning Jackson. There was an interesting nugget from Punchbowl News this morning, on Hawley and why he is pressing his attack on the judge over her past sentencing of offenders convicted over child sexual abuse images. More
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Why dissent by conservative justices in voting rights cases is alarming
Why dissent by conservative justices in voting rights cases is alarmingDemocrats won two major victories, but a dissenting opinion from three of the supreme court’s justices set off alarms bells Hello, and Happy Thursday,It’s no secret that the US supreme court has been hostile to voting rights recently. But two recent decisions, I think, highlight why what the court is doing is both alarming and inconsistent.Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterOn Monday evening, the court gave Democrats two major victories, blocking Republican attempts to impose unfair congressional maps in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. In both states the respective state supreme courts had redrawn them to be fairer – decisions which the US supreme court upheld. Yet even though legal experts expected this outcome, a dissenting opinion from three of the court’s conservative justices set off loud alarm bells for me.The dissent was authored by Justice Samuel Alito (and joined by Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch in the North Carolina case). The three justices wrote that they would have blocked the state supreme court maps from going into effect. They pointed to a provision in the US constitution, the elections clause, that explicitly gives state legislatures the authority to set the “time, manner, and place” of federal elections. That provision, they said, likely means that state supreme courts can’t impose a new map, even if the one the legislature adopts violates a state’s constitution.“If the language of the Elections Clause is taken seriously, there must be some limit on the authority of state courts to countermand actions taken by state legislatures when they are prescribing rules for the conduct of federal elections,” Alito wrote.Alito’s dissent embraces an idea called the “independent state legislature doctrine”. Increasingly popular among conservative litigants, it argues that state courts cannot second-guess election rules – whether it be a gerrymandered map or a new voter ID law – passed by a legislature. It would give state legislatures enormous power over elections.The theory largely fell into disuse in the early 20th century, according to a paper by Michael Morley, a law professor at Florida State University. The supreme court has also repeatedly rejected the idea over the last century. But in a handful of cases during the 2020 election, Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Thomas all expressed interest in the idea.The focus on this idea is also notable because it is directly at odds with what Alito and other conservative justices have said recently.Reading Alito’s dissent, I couldn’t help but think of a majority opinion that he, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh signed onto in 2019. In that case, called Rucho v Common Cause, they were part of a majority that said federal courts could not do anything to stop partisan gerrymandering. But, Roberts wrote, state laws and state courts could continue to police it. It was a clear instruction to litigants that they should take their cases about partisan gerrymandering to state courts, which is exactly what they did in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.Now, Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch – and maybe Kavanaugh – seem to be backing away from that position.It’s not the only area of voting rights law where the supreme court has pulled a kind of bait-and-switch recently. In 2013, when a majority of the court, including Roberts, Alito and Thomas, gutted the the heart of the Voting Rights Act, designed to prevent voting discrimination, it pointed to another provision of the law, section 2, as a tool litigants could continue to use. But recently, the court has been slowly chipping away at section 2, too, making it harder to challenge laws under it and stepping in to overrule lower courts that have relied on it to block discriminatory maps. Taken together, the cases show how the supreme court is slowly attacking laws that are supposed to prevent Americans against voting discrimination.One other piece of Alito’s dissent deserves attention because it is, I would argue, hypocritical. In two short paragraphs, Alito explained why he didn’t think it would be a big deal for a court to step in and order North Carolina to adopt new congressional districts after candidates had begun filing for office ahead of the state’s 17 May primary. The public interest favored such a reset, he said, to ensure that districts were constitutional. All candidates would have to do, he said, was file a new form indicating they were running in the districts the legislature, not the state supreme court, had adopted. “That would not have been greatly disruptive,” he wrote.But last month, Alito took the opposite approach when he agreed with an opinion by Kavanaugh saying it would be too disruptive to impose new, non-discriminatory maps for Alabama’s 24 May primary – a week later than the one in North Carolina. Kavanaugh wrote: “Running elections statewide is extraordinarily complicated and difficult. Those elections require enormous advance preparations by state and local officials, and pose significant logistical challenges.”That argument prompted a furious response from Justice Elena Kagan, who said discrimination in Alabama should not get a free pass merely because elections were on the horizon. “Alabama is not entitled to keep violating Black Alabamians’ voting rights just because the court’s order came down in the first month of an election year,” she said.The opposing conclusions Alito reached in both cases underscores the immense discretion he is wielding on the bench to evaluate these claims. In North Carolina, when the legislature’s constitutional rights were at issue, it warranted the supreme court’s intervention. In Alabama, when Black Americans’ voting rights were at issue, he believed the court’s intervention was not needed.Also worth watching…
A Colorado election clerk was indicted on charges she helped allow unaurthorized access to voting equipment.
Florida Republicans are on the verge of creating a new office to investigate election crimes.
The top election official in Texas’s largest county announced she would resign after the county experienced significant voting problems in the state’s primary.
Newly released records in Wisconsin provide insight into a widely criticized review of the 2020 election.
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Ketanji Brown Jackson will be a superb addition to the US supreme court | Moira Donegan
Ketanji Brown Jackson will be a superb addition to the US supreme courtMoira DoneganUnlike most people nominated to the court, Jackson’s career has included advocating for the rights of criminal defendants and the poor She has always wanted this. Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s nominee to fill the supreme court seat left vacant by the retirement of Stephen Breyer at the end of this term, said that she wanted to become a judge one day in the yearbook from her Miami high school. By then she was already a champion in national oratory competitions, sharpening the skills of rhetoric and cadence that are the stock and trade of ambitious lawyers. Her parents – an attorney and a school principal – saw their daughter’s potential, and helped her to hoist herself from her middle-class origins onto the path followed by ambitious lawyers from more patrician backgrounds. She went to Harvard for undergrad and then to Harvard Law, eventually clerking on the court for Breyer himself – a justice known to be particularly picky with his clerkships.She seems to have pursued the law with single-minded devotion since she was very young, committing herself to the profession with all the passion and devotion of a vocation.Tucker Carlson condemned for Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘Rwanda’ commentsRead moreBut her legal career took her to places most supreme court justices’ careers have not: In addition to her standard bona fides in private practice and later on the federal bench, she served on the United States Sentencing Commission, working to assess federal criminal sentencing practices and advocating for reduced sentences for drug offenders. Later, she served as a federal public defender in Washington. This makes her the first former public defender nominated to the court, and the first since Thurgood Marshall with extensive criminal defense experience. Her nomination signals a respect for a field of legal practice with great moral authority but little respect from the legal establishment: advocating for the rights of criminal defendants and the poor.When Biden nominated Jackson to a seat on the DC circuit court just last summer, the post was widely seen as a stepping-stone to the supreme court itself: Jackson had already been all but anointed as Breyer’s successor. She sailed through that confirmation, even bagging three Republican votes. The ease of her last appointment, even amid the backdrop of her future one, suggested that Senate Republicans had not been able to manufacture controversy from her record, a failure on their part that suggests remarkable discipline on Jackson’s. She seems to have behaved in a manner becoming a federal judge her whole life. It’s as if she was born wearing a black robe.And yet for much of the nation’s history, Judge Jackson’s story would have been impossible. Jackson is the first Black woman to be nominated to the supreme court, fulfilling a Biden campaign promise, and she has made her way in a legal profession – and indeed, in a country – that is accustomed to discarding Black women’s talent. In many ways she represents America’s great, if usually thwarted, promise: that hard work by individuals, combined with a moral arc of national history that bends toward justice, can deliver talented and worthy people to success despite the injustices imposed on them for their race, their sex, or their origins. That there has never been a Black woman on the court before is testament to how rarely this promise is kept: Jackson is not the first Black female legal mind worthy of the court, and if she is confirmed, she will serve alongside more than one white man of lesser intellect and character. But though she is the first, she will not be the last.When Jackson joins the court, all of the Democratic appointees will be women. Two will be women of color. That gender disparity is likely to be especially stark in abortion and LGBT rights cases the coming years, as the conservative legal movement builds off its expected success in Dobbs v Jackson, the case that will overturn Roe v Wade this summer, and sets its sights undoing the privacy right that the court has used to protect sexual freedoms. Over its coming terms, the court – whose extreme right bent will not be changed by Jackson’s addition – is likely to approve further abortion bans and restrictions, cut off contraception access, and roll back marriage equality, trans rights, and the legality of gay sex.Dissenting will be three women who stand for the rights of Americans to live lives free of the notion that biology must be destiny, and unencumbered by sex role stereotypes. These women will stand for these freedoms, and others, while a majority of six conservative justices enshrine male supremacy and forced birth into federal law. Jackson’s opinions will likely be oriented more towards young lawyers and the general public than towards her conservative colleagues, who have shown themselves petulant and unwilling to engage in good faith with the arguments of the liberals. It is not an enviable task that Jackson will face on the court, but we can be grateful that she is willing to take it.Nor will her confirmation be easy. Though Jackson has long been the favorite to replace Breyer, in recent weeks a group of conservative Democrats, led by the influential congressman Jim Clyburn, made a concerted push to encourage Biden to nominate Judge Michelle Childs, a federal district court judge from South Carolina. Childs’ nomination would have been a favor to Clyburn, whose endorsement of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential primary is widely credited with reviving Biden’s faltering campaign. But Childs had sparked weariness from the left for her past decisions regarding criminal sentencing and her private practice work on labor disputes. Perhaps it was this criticism that endeared her to Senate Republicans, who issues warm words about Childs and dangled a bipartisan confirmation vote in front of Biden. Now that their preferred candidate has been rejected in favor of one more amenable to progressives, conservatives have endeavored to paint Jackson has an extreme leftist.“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,” tweeted Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican on the Senate judiciary committee who voted to confirm Judge Jackson to the DC circuit last summer.Jackson’s actual jurisprudence reflects scrupulousness more than radicality. While on the DC circuit this past year, Judge Jackson presided over a case called Committee on the Judiciary v McGahn, a lawsuit concerning the Trump administration’s attempt to sabotage a congressional investigation. It’s the kind of case that ambitious judges pray to avoid: high-profile and politically charged, with one party that would declare any unfavorable outcome a process violation.Knowing she was under a microscope, Jackson delivered a measured, thorough, and lengthy ruling declaring that former White House counsel Don McGahn could be compelled to testify before Congress. It was the kind of point-by-point argument meant to be ironclad even to the least sympathetic of readers. But the opinion also contained memorable flashes of rhetoric. “Presidents are not kings,” Jackson wrote. “They do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control.” It was the kind of writing that would represent the pinnacle of many judges’ careers. For Jackson, it may be only the beginning.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
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Biden nominates Ketanji Brown Jackson to become first Black woman on supreme court
Biden nominates Ketanji Brown Jackson to become first Black woman on supreme courtWhite House praises ‘exceptionally qualified nominee’Jackson, if confirmed, will replace retiring Stephen Breyer Joe Biden on Friday nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the supreme court, seeking to elevate a Black woman to the nation’s highest court for the first time in its 232-year history.Biden’s decision to nominate Jackson to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, for whom she clerked, sets up a fierce confirmation battle in the deeply partisan and evenly-divided Senate. Breyer, the most senior jurist in the court’s three-member liberal wing, will retire at the end of the court’s current session this summer.Speaking from the Cross Hall of the White House, the president introduced the 51-year-old judge to the nation as “the daughter of former public school teachers” and a “proven consensus-builder” who has displayed “a pragmatic understanding that the law must work for the American people”.Ketanji Brown Jackson: who is Biden’s supreme court choice?Read moreHer nomination comes exactly two years to the day after Biden, struggling miserably in his third campaign for the presidency, vowed to nominate a Black woman to the supreme court if elected president.“For too long, our government, our courts, haven’t looked like America,” Biden said, flanked by Jackson and vice-president Kamala Harris, the first Black and Asian American woman to serve as vice president, whom the president said was influential in helping him make this consequential decision. “I believe it’s time that we have a court that reflects the full talents and greatness of our nation.”Jackson, who was widely considered a frontrunner for the nomination,sits on the powerful US court of appeals for the DC circuit, after winning bipartisan approval during her Senate confirmation last year, when Biden elevated her from the federal district court in the District of Columbia.Born in the nation’s capital and raised in Miami, Jackson clerked for Breyer during the supreme court’s 1999-2000 term. She is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, an elite background that matches the resumes of several justices on the supreme court but which Republicans have sought to paint her as out-of-touch.In Jackson, Biden said he found a nominee who shared a “uniquely accomplished and wide ranging background” as the justice she would replace if confirmed. In her remarks, Jackson praised the retiring justice for exemplifying “civility, grace, pragmatism and generosity of spirit”.“Members of the Senate will decide if I fill your seat,” she said. “But please know that I could never fill your shoes.”Across her broad legal career, Jackson worked as a public defender, an experience that sets her apart from most judges sitting on the federal bench. She previously served as vice-chair of the US Sentencing Commission, where she focused on reducing sentencing disparities as part of the agency’s work setting sentencing guidelines in federal criminal cases.In its statement, the White House said Biden sought a nominee “who is wise, pragmatic, and has a deep understanding of the constitution as an enduring charter of liberty”.It added: “The president sought an individual who is committed to equal justice under the law and who understands the profound impact that the supreme court’s decisions have on the lives of the American people.”Jackson’s confirmation would not affect the ideological composition of the court, controlled by a conservative super-majority of six justices, including three appointed by Donald Trump, but it does secure a liberal seat on the bench probably for decades to come.The opportunity to name a justice to the supreme court is a welcome bright spot for the president, whose approval ratings have fallen to record lows as he confronts myriad crises at home and abroad. It is also his most significant opportunity yet to shape the federal judiciary, which remains overwhelmingly white and male. In his first year, Biden nominated a record number of district and appeals court judges from a range of racial, ethnic, geographical and legal backgrounds.When Breyer announced his retirement in January, Biden vowed to nominate a jurist with “extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity”. And, reaffirming his campaign pledge, he added “that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States supreme court.”Urged by congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina ahead of his state’s primary, Biden made the pledge during a debate. Days later, with Clyburn’s endorsement, Black voters lifted Biden to a resounding victory in the South Carolina primary that set in motion a string of successes that ultimately earned him the nomination and later the White House.The promise divided Republican senators, some of whom argued that race or gender shouldn’t play a role in the selection process, despite similar commitments from Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and Trump.Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have said they intend to move forward quickly with the confirmation process.Senate leader Chuck Schumer said: “The historic nomination of Judge Jackson is an important step toward ensuring the supreme court reflects the nation as a whole. As the first Black woman supreme court justice in the court’s 232-year-history, she will inspire countless future generations of young Americans.”Schumer added: “With her exceptional qualifications and record of evenhandedness, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will be a Justice who will uphold the constitution and protect the rights of all Americans, including the voiceless and vulnerable.”Jackson has successfully navigated the Senate confirmation process on three occasions, winning support from both parties each time. But nothing compares to the glare of a supreme court nomination hearing. Already, her nomination is being met with resistance from Republicans.South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, one of the three Republicans who voted to confirm her to the court considered the second highest in the land in 2021, said her nomination suggested the “radical left has won President Biden over yet again”.He had expressed a preference for J Michelle Childs, a US district judge in his home state of South Carolina.Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination is rare moment of celebration for BidenRead moreUnlike for most major pieces of legislation, Democrats can confirm Jackson with their 50 votes and Harris breaking the tie.If confirmed, Jackson would become the sixth woman to serve on the court and only the third Black justice, both men. They are Clarence Thomas, a conservative who was appointed in 1991 and is still serving, and Thurgood Marshall, the first African American supreme court justice.It will be the first supreme court confirmation hearing for a Democratic president since Elena Kagan was nominated by Barack Obama 12 years ago. Republicans refused to hold a hearing for Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, which further poisoned what has become scorched-earth affairs.On the appellate court, Jackson served in the seat held by Garland, after he became the attorney general.But there are already early signs that this confirmation may be different, as Republicans weigh how aggressively to confront Biden’s nominee, particularly when it will not affect the balance of the court.With their agenda stalled and the president unpopular, Democrats are hopeful the nomination will energize their base as they brace for a political backlash in this year’s midterm elections.Closing her remarks, Jackson acknowledged the historic nature of her nomination by noting an “interesting coincidence”: she shares a birthday with Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to become a federal judge.“Today, I proudly stand on Judge Motley’s shoulders, sharing not only her birthday, but also her steadfast and courageous commitment to equal justice under law,” Jackson said.And if confirmed, she concluded, “I can only hope that my life and career, my love of this country and the constitution and my commitment to upholding the rule of law and the sacred principles upon which this great nation was founded, will inspire future generations of Americans.”TopicsKetanji Brown JacksonUS supreme courtLaw (US)US politicsJoe BidenBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More
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National Archives reportedly asks DoJ to investigate Trump document handling
National Archives reportedly asks DoJ to investigate Trump document handlingRequest follows reports of Trump tearing up documents and sending boxes of files to Mar-a-Lago property The National Archives and Records Administration (Nara) has asked the justice department to investigate whether the former US president Donald Trump violated federal law in the handling of documents, the Washington Post has reported. The Associated Press was unable to independently confirm the report.The referral followed several Washington Post stories chronicling how Trump dealt with documents, including tearing them up. In one report, confirmed by the archives, the agency arranged the transport of 15 boxes of documents from the Mar-a-Lago property in Florida after Trump’s representatives discovered them and notified the archives.The Washington Post says the referral is asking the justice department to investigate whether Trump violated the Presidential Records Act, which requires that all presidential records of an administration be turned over to the National Archives when a president leaves office.The archives did not return multiple messages seeking comment. The justice department declined to comment. In a statement, Trump said: “Following collaborative and respectful discussions, the National Archives and Records Administration (Nara) arranged for the transport of boxes that contained presidential records in compliance with the Presidential Records Act” from Mar-a-Lago that will one day become part of the Donald J Trump presidential library.The media’s “characterisation of my relationship with Nara is fake news. It was exactly the opposite. It was a great honour to work with Nara to help formally preserve the Trump legacy,” said Trump.The archive acknowledged this week that Trump representatives had been cooperating with Nara and had located records “that had not been transferred to the National Archives at the end of the Trump administration”. Nara arranged for them to be transported to Washington. “Nara officials did not visit or raid the Mar-a-Lago property,” the agency said.Nara said the former president’s representatives are continuing to search for additional records that belong to the archives.In a separate statement, David S Ferriero, the archivist of the United States, said: “Whether through the creation of adequate and proper documentation, sound records management practices, the preservation of records, or the timely transfer of them to the National Archives at the end of an administration, there should be no question as to need for both diligence and vigilance. Records matter.”Supreme court rejects Trump bid to shield documents from January 6 panelRead moreThe issue of presidential records, the Trump administration and the archives has been central to the investigation by the House committee investigating the insurrection on 6 January that sought to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election. Trump tried to withhold White House documents in a dispute that rose to the supreme court.In an 8-1 ruling last month, the court let stand a lower court ruling that said the archives could turn over documents, which include presidential diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts and handwritten notes dealing with 6 January from the files of the former chief of staff Mark Meadows. At the time, the House committee agreed to defer its attempt to retrieve some documents, at the request of the Biden administration.A referral for potential criminal prosecution from a federal agency or from Congress does not mean the justice department is likely to bring charges or that it will even investigate the matter.Questions about Trump’s handling of records date back to 2018, when Politico reported that Trump aides, fearing he might violate the law, routinely pieced together documents with tape because of his habit of tearing them up.TopicsDonald TrumpUS supreme courtUS justice systemNational ArchivesLaw (US)US politicsnewsReuse this content More
