Biden introduces ‘brilliant’ Ketanji Brown Jackson as U.S. Supreme Court pick

U.S. President Joe Biden introduced federal appeals court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as his nominee to be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court Friday, saying he had found “a brilliant legal mind with the utmost character and integrity.”

Jackson “will bring extraordinary qualifications, deep experience and intellect, and a rigorous judicial record to the court,” Biden said at the White House, flanked by her and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Jackson, 51, would be the sixth female justice in the court’s history, the third African American and the first to have once been a federal public defender. She would succeed the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, for whom she once worked as a law clerk. The nomination won’t alter the court’s conservative tilt but would add a fresh voice to the three-member liberal wing.

Jackson said she hoped “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.”

Jackson highlighted the history of her family, which includes teachers, and law enforcement personnel but also “one uncle who got caught up in the drug trade and received a life sentence.” She spoke with her husband, Washington surgeon Patrick Jackson, and one of her two daughters on hand.

She thanked Breyer for performing “at the highest level of skill and integrity, while also being guided by civility, grace pragmatism and generosity of spirit.”

If Jackson is confirmed, it will be the first time the Supreme Court has had two Black justices on the bench at the same time.

The nomination will be Biden’s first to a court whose conservative majority is poised to transform the law, potentially expanding gun rights, slashing federal regulatory power and overturning the constitutional right to abortion.

If successful, Jackson’s nomination could provide a needed political boost for Biden as he battles slumping approval ratings and the prospect of a Republican takeover of Congress in the November midterm election. Biden met his self-imposed deadline to select a nominee by the end of February, even as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine diverted attention away from the vacancy.

Biden will have to get the nomination through a 50-50 Senate that Democrats control only because of Harris’ tie-breaking vote. Jackson won confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last year with support from three Republicans: Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

But Graham said in a tweet that Jackson’s selection would mean that “the radical Left has won President Biden over yet again.” Graham had voiced support for another candidate for the post, U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs of his home state of South Carolina.

And Murkowski said that “I’ve been clear that previously voting to confirm an individual to a lower court does not signal how I will vote for a Supreme Court justice.”

Collins was more supportive, calling Jackson in a statement “an experienced federal judge with impressive academic and legal credentials.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and members of his leadership team so far have shown no signs they want to engage in a heated partisan fight over Biden’s nominee.

Jackson will receive a “prompt hearing” in the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming weeks, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Friday. Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin said last week his goal is to confirm the pick in the full Senate by April 9, the start of a two-week congressional Easter recess.

At the White House, standing between Jackson and Harris, Biden said that it was time for the Supreme Court to better reflect the nation.

“It’s my honor to introduce to the country a daughter of former public school teachers, a proven consensus builder, an accomplished lawyer, a distinguished jurist on one of the nation’s most prestigious courts,” he said.

Jackson, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, got the nomination less than a year after Biden appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a powerful court where three current justices once served. Jackson has issued only two full opinions since joining that court, a point Republicans might raise in opposing her.

Her career has been a varied one, including stints at several large law firms and an appointment to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. In a 2017 speech, she described her early career as a “professional odyssey of epic proportions” as she struggled to balance work with family life.

President Barack Obama appointed her as a federal district judge in Washington in 2013. In that capacity, she was involved in several high-profile cases involving then-President Donald Trump.

She ruled in 2019 that former White House counsel Don McGahn had to testify at a House impeachment hearing despite Trump’s objection. “Presidents are not kings,” she wrote in her 120-page decision.

Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Miami, where her father worked as a lawyer for the county school board and her mother was the principal of a magnet school.

She worked as a federal public defender in Washington from 2005 to 2007. Some critics have seized on her work in representing Khi Ali Gul, an inmate being held as an enemy combatant at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

She told the Senate Judiciary Committee last year that, at the time she represented Gul, her brother was serving in Iraq as a U.S. Army infantryman.

“I was keenly and personally mindful of the tragic and deplorable circumstances that gave rise to the U.S. government’s apprehension and detention of the persons who were secured at Guantanamo Bay,” she said in a written response to questions posed as part of her appeals court confirmation process.