Joe Biden Picks Ketanji Brown Jackson For The Supreme Court

President Joe Biden has chosen Ketanji Brown Jackson as his Supreme Court nominee, the White House announced on Friday, a decision that will delight progressives and that seals his promise to put the first Black woman onto the nation’s highest court.

Jackson, 51, was considered the front-runner to replace Justice Stephen Breyer, who announced in January that he plans to retire this summer.

Jackson has been a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit since June. She previously served as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for eight years. She is a former public defender and was vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission. She also clerked for Breyer during the 1999-2000 Supreme Court term.

Presidents regularly pluck Supreme Court nominees from the D.C. Circuit. Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh all served on this court, as did the late Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia.

Progressive judicial advocacy groups and dozens of organizations representing public defenders had been urging Biden to pick Jackson. They argued it was long past time for a former public defender to have a seat on the court.

“I’m not looking to make an ideological choice,” Biden recently told NBC’s Lester Holt regarding his selection process. “I’m looking for someone to replace Judge Breyer with the same kind of capacity that Judge Breyer had, with an open mind, who understands the Constitution and interprets it in a way that is consistent with the mainstream interpretation of the Constitution.”

Barring extraordinary circumstances, there is no reason to believe Jackson will not be confirmed. Biden already has the votes in his own party to confirm her. The Senate is currently tied along party lines, 50-50, and Democrats are unlikely to oppose the historic Supreme Court nomination of a Black woman by their party’s leader. In the event of a tie, Vice President Kamala Harris would cast the decisive vote.

One Democrat, Sen. Ben Ray Luján (N.M.), is currently out recovering from a stroke, but he is expected to return to work well before a vote on Jackson would take place.

Jackson’s confirmation wouldn’t change the ideological bent of the Supreme Court. It is currently tilted 6-3 in favor of conservatives, and she would replace Breyer, one of those three Democrat-appointed justices. Her confirmation would simply preserve the status quo of Democrats’ minority representation on the court.

It’s possible that former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will be in the audience for Jackson’s Senate confirmation hearing. They are family, after all: The judge’s husband, Patrick Johnson, is the twin brother of Ryan’s brother-in-law William Jackson.

Ryan even testified on Jackson’s behalf in her 2012 confirmation hearing, calling her “clearly qualified” and “an amazing person.”

“Our politics may differ, but my praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, for her integrity, it is unequivocal,” the Wisconsin Republican said at the time. “I favorably recommend your consideration.”

It now falls to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to schedule Jackson’s confirmation hearing.