Tag: Ketanji Brown Jackson

Five Biden appointees advance to confirmation votes

Five of President Biden’s judicial nominees advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. Two court of appeals nominees, including D.C. Circuit nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, passed on narrow majorities. Three dsitrict court nominees sailed through with large majorities.

Judge Jackson won the support of two Republican Senators, Lindsay Graham and John Cornyn, and passed to the full Senate with a final committee vote of 13-9. That someone as accomplished as Jackson received nine “no” votes is a clear sign of our political dysfunction. Senator Chuck Grassley, who voted against Jackson, explained that “unless a circuit court nominee can show me that he or she is affirmatively committed to the constitution as affirmatively understood, I don’t think that he or she should be confirmed.”

One point to Senator Grassley for honesty, but a three-point deduction for damaging partisanship. Yes, the D.C. Circuit has become the most ideological of the circuit courts, and yes, there is reason for the GOP to be concerned about the Democrats’ transparent effort to pack that court and then funnel all federal elections challenges through it. But elections have consequences, and no one should expect that a Biden nominee will be a committed originalist. Grassley’s bright-line rule for appellate nominees places him squarely in the camp of noted Third Branch emasculators Kamala Harris and Mazie Hirono.

Biden tips his hand on the next Supreme Court nominee

Keep an eye on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the newest nominee to the D.C. Circuit.

Ketanji Brown JacksonPresident Biden has issued his first list of intended judicial nominees, mostly to federal district courts across the country. They are a highly accomplished and — as best I can tell — highly qualified group of nominees. 

Perusing the list, I’m going to call my shot now and predict that whenever an opening on the Supreme Court occurs, the  President’s first nominee will be Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Judge Jackson is already a well-respected federal district judge, and is set to be nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She therefore follows the path of other budding judicial stars who were elevated to the circuit courts before an eventual Supreme Court nomination by the same president. (Justice Amy Coney Barrett is the most recent example.) Judge Jackson also checks all the boxes: she is brilliant, accomplished, hard-working, well-respected, relatively young, and (important for Biden’s camp, at least) a Black woman. She is also kind, professional, and gracious — at least that is the clear memory I have from the time we overlapped as litigation associates at Goodwin Procter nearly twenty years ago.

Predictably, much of the mainstream media is focusing on the race and gender of the nominees, rather than their exceptional talent and qualifications. This does a remarkable disservice both to the nominees and the public. It reduces a lifetime of individual hard work, achievement — and yes, most assuredly some luck — to a crass demographic calculation. And it communicates that their skills and abilities are secondary to their immutable characteristics, a message that can only reduce confidence in judicial decisions and the court system as a whole.  

Congratulations to all the nominees. The country will better off with your skill and talent filling our open judgeships.