During a Democratic debate, President Joe Biden Biden promised to pick a Black woman for the Supreme Court.
Biden is currently much of his time on the bloody Russo-Ukraine War, even with an upcoming retirement from the court. However, he may have delivered on these judicial promises.
Specifically, Biden has reportedly picked Ketanji Brown Jackson, a federal appeals judge in Washington, D.C.
This week, Jackson made headlines for issuing an opinion on a Thursday, as opposed to her court’s usual Tuesdays or Fridays. By breaking schedule, she stirred rumors about a nomination to the Supreme Court.
Sure enough, the news was confirmed by two people familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss it before the president’s official announcement later Friday.
Biden was reportedly also considering California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger and U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs of South Carolina.
However, Kruger came under fire for her record as a swing voter, and Childs has angered the Left by working as a labor and employment attorney… on the management side. In this light, Jackson became almost a consensus pick among the Democrats.
Like Biden, Jackson began her career as a public defender. If confirmed, she would become the court’s first criminal defense attorney since the 1991 retirement of Thurgood Marshall. What’s more, she would become the first public defender.
In addition to public defense, Jackson also boasts the elite background typical of Supreme Court justices.
She clerked for current Justice Stephen Breyer early in her legal career. She attended Harvard as an undergraduate and for law school, and served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the agency that develops federal sentencing policy, before becoming a federal judge in 2013.
Currently she serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a position that Biden elevated her to last year from her previous job as a federal trial court judge. Three current justices — Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts, the chief justice — previously served on the same court.
On that court, Jackson has attracted national attention. She was part of a three-judge panel that ruled in December against Trump’s effort to shield documents from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Jackson would be replacing Breyer, another appointment by Democrat administration. In other words, she seems unlikely to change the partisan balance of the court, with its six Republican appointments and three Democratic appointments.
For this reason, she may pass through the Senate with an uncontroversial hearing, compared to the firestorms that surrounded the hearings of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and former Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland.
After the president’s nominations, the Senate needs at least 51 votes to confirm federal judges, and Vice President Kamala Harris can break a tie in today’s 50-50 Senate.
Jackson may earn the votes of all 50 Democrats and a few Republicans.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, expressed openness to voting for Biden’s nominee during an interview with The New York Times. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the same at a press conference earlier this month. Both senators voted to confirm Jackson to a lower court last year.
Plus, Jackson is related by marriage to former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc.
The entire process passes through several time-consuming steps, including meetings with individual senators. While Barrett was confirmed just four weeks after her nomination following the death of her predecessor Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the process usually takes several weeks longer than that.
That timeline could be complicated by a number of things, including the ongoing developments between Russia and Ukraine and the extended absence of Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, who suffered a stroke last month and is out for several weeks. Democrats would need Lujan’s vote to confirm Biden’s pick if no Republicans support her.
If confirmed, Jackson, 51, can remain on the court for life.
The Horn News and The Associated Press contributed to this article.