Ignoring the right wing indirect Harris bashing
Biden’s Likeliest Supreme Court Pick
...Dozens of candidates are being talked about, but nearly all of the Court watchers I interviewed for this story have their money on one in particular: Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Jackson, who is 51, fulfills a lot of requirements for the establishment set. She has the same Ivy League credentials as the sitting justices, having earned both her undergraduate and her law degree from Harvard and edited for the Harvard Law Review. She clerked for three federal judges—including Breyer, from 1999 to 2000. If nominated and confirmed, Jackson will follow the same track as Brett Kavanaugh, who also clerked for the justice he ultimately replaced. Also like Kavanaugh—and seven other current and former justices—Jackson would be coming directly from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the second-most important court in the country after the Supreme Court.
Jackson also has strayed from the typical route of a Court nominee, which matters a lot to Democrats, who have tended to prioritize experience over ideology. After a few years in private practice, she worked as a federal public defender. Later, she served for four years as the Obama-appointed vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, during which time the commission reduced sentences for many people convicted of drug crimes. Appointing someone with Jackson’s experience to the Supreme Court “would make quite a statement,” Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice, a progressive group advocating for court reform, told me. “It would signal a new era and a shift away from the decades-long default to former prosecutors and corporate lawyers.”Jackson does not have a history of controversial rulings. But in her previous perch as a federal district judge, she drew attention for deciding several times against the Trump administration. Most famously, Jackson ruled in 2019 that former White House Counsel Don McGahn had to comply with a congressional subpoena and testify before Congress as part of its impeachment inquiry into then-President Donald Trump. A particular line in the ruling impressed Democrats: “The primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings,” Jackson wrote...
Biden’s Likeliest Supreme Court Pick
...Dozens of candidates are being talked about, but nearly all of the Court watchers I interviewed for this story have their money on one in particular: Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Jackson, who is 51, fulfills a lot of requirements for the establishment set. She has the same Ivy League credentials as the sitting justices, having earned both her undergraduate and her law degree from Harvard and edited for the Harvard Law Review. She clerked for three federal judges—including Breyer, from 1999 to 2000. If nominated and confirmed, Jackson will follow the same track as Brett Kavanaugh, who also clerked for the justice he ultimately replaced. Also like Kavanaugh—and seven other current and former justices—Jackson would be coming directly from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the second-most important court in the country after the Supreme Court.
Jackson also has strayed from the typical route of a Court nominee, which matters a lot to Democrats, who have tended to prioritize experience over ideology. After a few years in private practice, she worked as a federal public defender. Later, she served for four years as the Obama-appointed vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, during which time the commission reduced sentences for many people convicted of drug crimes. Appointing someone with Jackson’s experience to the Supreme Court “would make quite a statement,” Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice, a progressive group advocating for court reform, told me. “It would signal a new era and a shift away from the decades-long default to former prosecutors and corporate lawyers.”Jackson does not have a history of controversial rulings. But in her previous perch as a federal district judge, she drew attention for deciding several times against the Trump administration. Most famously, Jackson ruled in 2019 that former White House Counsel Don McGahn had to comply with a congressional subpoena and testify before Congress as part of its impeachment inquiry into then-President Donald Trump. A particular line in the ruling impressed Democrats: “The primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings,” Jackson wrote...