Biden Selects Ketanji Brown Jackson as Newest Supreme Court Justice

If confirmed, Ketanji Brown Jackson will be the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court (Flickr).

In light of Justice Stepher Breyer’s retirement in January, President Joe Biden finally nominated a candidate to replace him: Ketanji Brown Jackson. On February 25, Biden announced via Twitter that he had selected Jackson, “one of our nation’s brightest legal minds” and a judge for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. If the Senate votes to confirm her nomination, Jackson will be the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Jackson would be one of the first Supreme Court justices to enter her role with multiple years of experience as a criminal defense attorney. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, she served as a public defender in Washington, D.C for eight years. 

Reactions to Jackson’s recent nomination have varied. Democratic senators will likely want to confirm Jackson as quickly as possible considering the fact Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland was shut down in 2016 by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. This time around, Democratic senators will scramble to confirm Jackson’s spot in the Supreme Court before re-elections next November, when the Senate majority could swing to the Republicans.

The Biden administration has already attempted to appeal to Republicans by emphasizing Jackson’s connections to law enforcement. A Miami native, Jackson was influenced as a young woman by the intricate layers of the legal system. According to the New York Times, “The story of [her uncle’s] cocaine conviction in the rough-and-tumble Miami of the 1980s formed only part of her early understanding of the criminal justice system’s complexities. Another uncle was Miami’s police chief. A third, a sex crimes detective.” 

Americans nationwide have expressed their reactions to Jackson’s nomination, especially considering that she would be the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. However, one such voice, from now-deceased Justice Antonin Scalia, stands out. Although Scalia is not here today to react directly to Jackson’s nomination, he once declared that Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black Justice, “could be a persuasive force just by sitting there.” Perhaps Jackson, if confirmed, will play a crucial role in the path towards a more diverse—in all ways—government of the United States.