BY BILL JUNEAU
As the thunder, fighting and blood continued in far-away Ukraine, President Biden announced that he was keeping his pledge and was nominating a black woman to be an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Progressives were elated as the President introduced the bespectacled Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, as his pick to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer.
His selection as the nominee followed a narrow and unprecedented vetting process. Only black women could be considered for the job. Legal ability, intelligence, character, experience and temperament were to be assessed, but only after the applicant had marked the gender and skin color boxes.
The court has had a void of black women justices for 250 years, said the President, and that negative quality must be remedied. "This is who we are," said the slow moving and frail- looking President in his customary horse whisper, as he introduced his grinning nominee several days ago to a mostly televised audience.
Progressive Democrats were pleased and they applauded Biden's selection of Jackson for her experience in defending accused criminals and because she will be a voice for the downtrodden and homeless living in tents. Too often, accused persons' rights are overlooked in the face of injuries to their distraught and complaining victims, and Judge Jackson will now be the voice to see that the criminal gets a fair shake.
Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University has raised the point that Biden apparently perceives a need to meet a quota on the panel with nine Justices on the Supreme Court. Doing so is kind of weird, some say, with Biden in the pocket of Democrats telling him what to do. If quotas are a requirement in his mind, where is his call for representation for other needy groups. Would he, for example, if an unanticipated opportunity arose, consider appointment of a transgendered legal scholar to be a voice for the LGBTQ community. Are there any disabled justices on the Supreme Court bench? What about Native Americans?
Senate majority leader, Charles E. "Cry'n Chuck" Schumer has lauded Biden for his nominee to fill the seat of Stephen Breyer who is continuing as a working Justice until the end of the current court term--in June or July. The vetting process will be swift, promised Schumer. He says Judge Jackson should be confirmed by April--a few months before Breyer is actually ready to clean out his desk.
It seems a bit unusual for the Senate to confirm a nominee for a Supreme Court vacancy--when the vacancy is in the future and conceivably might not occur, since a justice has the right to change his mind if he desires to do so.
After being pushed behind the curtain by persistent democrats, Justice Breyer agreed to retire this summer. But the 83-year-old Breyer is in good health and reportedly had no intentions of stepping down until he felt a gigantic push to do so from Democrats who fear the next Senate could be controlled by Republicans, and a Biden selection based only on skin color and gender would hit a wall. Mid-term elections are scheduled for next November, and analysts are predicting that the Democrats may take a shelling at the polls, with Senate control returning to the GOP.
Ketanji Jackson is a graduate of Harvard university and its law school and her place on the Supreme Court is in keeping with justices coming from Harvard and Yale. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham frowns upon this usual path for Supreme Court Justices. Also, he has indicated that he will not support the liberal Jackson who is regarded by many as a "radical" who endorses far left policies and who will abandon the constitution and write her own version of the law---whenever necessary.
Along with legal work in a law firm and as a public defender, Jackson was for a time a law clerk for Justice Breyer whom she will be replacing. In 2014, President Obama appointed her as a district judge in Washington D.C. where some of her decisions brought progressive cheers for opposing the policies of President Trump. In one decision, she savaged the former President for his sweeping claims of executive privilege. "Presidents are not kings," she wrote.
Last April, following Joe Biden's election, Judge Jackson was elevated to the D.C. Court of Appeals, replacing Merrick Garland on the nation's most liberal federal court of appeals. In her 10 months as an appellate Judge, Jackson has published only two opinions and one of them was reversed by a unanimous panel of her D.C. colleagues.
Mitch McConnell, Republican leader in the Senate, has called for a "rigorous, exhaustive review" of Jackson's nomination. He noted also that Judge Jackson was the favored choice of far-left "dark money" groups that have spent years attacking the legitimacy and structure of the court itself.
In a public statement, the Republican National Committee criticized Jackson as a "radical, left-wing activist who would rubber-stamp Biden's disastrous agenda" and vowed to "make sure that voters know just how radical Jackson is."
Sen.Schumer has said that he is optimistic that the Senate Judiciary committee will complete its vetting of Judge Jackson in April, and that she will be confirmed by the full Senate soon thereafter. With a quick confirmation by the Democratic Senate, the new justice will be waiting in the wings for Justice Breyer to clear out his belongings so that she can take over his office.
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