Tag Archives: supreme court justice

News, Observation, Politics

Ketanji Brown Jackson set for historic Supreme Court confirmation vote: 3 essential reads

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are scheduled to vote April 4, 2022, on Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination for the Supreme Court. It kicks off a potentially historic week in which a full Senate vote could set course for the nation’s highest court seating it’s first Black female judge.

The elevation of Jackson to the Supreme Court would not change the ideological setup of the bench – which would continue to be split 6-3 in favor of conservative justices.

Nonetheless, it would be an important landmark in the history of the Court – of the 115 justices on the Supreme Court since it was established in 1789, 108 have been white men.

Race featured in Jackson’s confirmation process; so too attempts to define her “judicial philosophy.” The Conversation has turned to legal scholars to explain the meaning of Jackson’s potential ascension to the court.

On the shoulders of pioneers

Jackson, if she wins confirmation at the next stage, a vote by the full Senate, will have broken through the ultimate glass ceiling in terms of legal careers. She would have done so on the shoulders of pioneering Black female judges.

University of Florida’s Sharon D. Wright Austin notes, even now, “relatively few Black women are judges at the state or federal level” – which makes the achievement of those who have made it to this level all the more remarkable.

Of the judges highlighted by Austin, there is Judge Jane Bolin, who became the country’s first Black female judge in 1939, serving as a domestic relations court judge in New York for almost four decades. Later, in 1961, Constance Baker Motley became the first Black woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court. In all she argued 10 cases before the Court, winning nine of them. Meanwhile, Judge Julia Cooper Mack is noted as the first Black woman to sit on a federal appellate court, being appointed in 1975 and serving 14 years on the bench.

These women are to be celebrated and remembered. As Wright Austin writes: “Representation matters: It is easier for young girls of color to aspire to reach their highest goals when they see others who have done so before them, in the same way that women like Jane Bolin, Constance Baker Motley and Julia Cooper Mack encouraged Ketanji Brown Jackson to reach hers.

Echoes of the past

The fact that a Black female Supreme Court justice is long overdue is testament to the slow progress the U.S. has made toward racial – and gender – equality.

Margaret Russell, a constitutional law professor from Santa Clara University, saw signs of this lack of advancement during parts of Jackson’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings.

Questions directed at the would-be Supreme Court justice were, according to Russell, tantamount to race-baiting. They also sounded eerily similar to criticisms that then-Supreme Court nominee Thurgood Marshall, the first Black American nominee to the court, faced in his own confirmation hearings in 1967.

Both Jackson now, and Marshall then, stood accused by senators of being soft on crime and were asked about how they intended to bring race into their legal decisions. “Are you prejudiced against white people in the South?” Marshall was asked by a known white supremacist senator. Similarly, Jackson was asked during her confirmation hearings if she had a “hidden agenda” to incorporate critical race theory, which holds that racism is structural in nature rather than expressed solely through personal bias, into the legal system.

“I find it striking,” Russell writes, “that race has surfaced in such a major way in these hearings, more than five decades after Marshall’s nomination. In some respects, there has been progress on racial equity in the U.S., but aspects of these hearings demonstrate that too much remains the same.”

What Jackson would bring to the Supreme Court

Jackson’s potentially historic achievement of becoming the first Black female Supreme Court justice may distract from the fact she is also eminently qualified to sit on the highest court in her own rights.

Alexis Karteron of Rutgers University-Newark notes that the Harvard law-trained Jackson went on to clerk for Stephen Breyer, the retiring justice she is set to replace. She has served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission as well as acting as both a trial court and appellate judge.

[Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world. Sign up today.]

Jackson is also the first former criminal defense attorney to be nominated to the Supreme Court since Marshall. This puts Jackson in a unique position on the bench. Karteron writes that having served as a public defender “will help [Jackson] understand the very real human toll of our criminal justice system. … The criminal justice system takes an enormous toll on both the people in the system and their loved ones. I believe having a Supreme Court justice who is familiar with that is incredibly valuable.”

Matt Williams, Breaking News Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Related Articles:

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Politics

A tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the impending clash to fill her seat

The impressive legacy of RBG

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died of pancreatic cancer in her Washington, D.C. home on Friday, September 18th. She was eighty-seven years old and led a most extraordinary life. Growing up middle class in New York City, she strove for excellence from an early age, making it to Cornell University and later Harvard and Columbia Law School. She did all of this during a period where very few women pursued (and even fewer achieved) careers in law.

Read More: Books to read right now about the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

To make matters even more compelling, she married Martin G. Ginsburg shortly after graduating from Cornell and was already raising her first child while working on her Law Degree. Nevertheless, she tied for top of her class at Columbia and despite all the sexist odds, she eventually landed her first job as a law clerk for the U.S. District Court of Southern New York.

Ginsburg taught at Rutgers Law School for several years in the 1960s before taking a position at Columbia Law in 1972, where she became the first-ever tenured female professor. This would not be the last barrier for Justice Ginsburg to break through.

[the_ad id=’254210′]

She channeled much of her intellect towards combatting systemic sexism in America’s legal fabric, co-founding the Women’s Rights Law Reporter journal as well as the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1971, she wrote the brief for Reed v. Reed, which extended the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause to women, and come 1980, President Jimmy Carter nominated her for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals. Here, she gained a reputation for making fair and level decisions alongside both conservative and liberal colleagues.

Nevertheless, R.B.G. was the furthest thing from a pushover, and she continued to fiercely champion women’s rights and gender equality throughout her career. She carried this zealous intensity into her seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, which President Bill Clinton nominated her for in 1993 following Justice Byron White’s retirement.

The second woman to ever serve on the Supreme Court, Ginsburg drew frequent parallels to Justice Thurgood Marshall in the public’s eye—many saying that she achieved for women’s rights what Marshall did for racial equity. In her twenty-seven years on the Court, she fought tirelessly for gender equality, most notably authoring U.S. v. Virginia, 518, which ended the Virginia Military Institute’s male-exclusive admissions policy, and dissenting Ledbetter v. Goodyear, which combatted pay discrimination based on sex. She also advocated for fathers and mothers—as well as husbands and wives—being seen as equally valuable family members in the eyes of the Constitution.

During the Obama Administration, as Justice Ginsburg entered her eighties, many encouraged her to retire so the Democratic president could nominate someone new before the next term. Combatting the odds yet again, she refused to step down.

The Divisive Future Of America’s Supreme Court

Now, in the wake of Ginsburg’s’ passing, America must look forward as politicians try to decide whether or not President Trump should be able to fill her vacant seat before November’s election. Many Democrats are saying that the seat should remain empty until the next term, rationalizing that the Supreme Court Justice is a lifelong position and a President should not be able to nominate someone if they themselves are going to be voted out in just a few weeks.

On the other hand, most Republicans want Trump to fill the seat immediately, citing that he has the Constitutional Right to do so and seeing the vacancy as an opportunity to regain a Republican majority in the Court. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) has already vowed to hold a vote on whoever Trump nominates.

The situation is somewhat the inverse of what happened in 2016, when Republican Justice Antonin Scalia passed away just months before President Obama left office. That time, Republicans filibustered to make sure Obama could not fill Scalia’s seat before the next election. They ultimately achieved this, as the seat remained empty when Trump took office, allowing him to appoint Justice Neil Gorsuch in April 2017.

Now, however, the stakes are even higher, for Gorsuch succeeding Scalia was simply one Republican replacing another. If a Republican nominee takes over Ginsburg’s Democratic seat, then it will create a Republican majority Supreme Court. In the present age where Republicans already have majority control of the Senate and Donald Trump sits in the White House, the Democrat-majority Court is the party’s last line of stability in the system of checks-and-balances.

Given that Election Day is nearly a month away, Ginsburg’s death could be a deciding factor in some voter’s minds. A vacant seat on the Court could compel right-leaning constituents to vote for Trump just for the sake of getting a Republican Justice. Likewise, the process draws attention away from other aspects marring the 2020 Trump campaign— i.e. his lack on initiative when it comes to COVID-19, his denial of climate science amidst California’s inferno, and his dismissive attitude towards present racial tensions in America.

On the Democrats’ side, perhaps the loss of Ginsburg will encourage more people to get out and vote now that more is at stake. If Joe Biden gets to nominate the next Justice, then the Courts will surely keep their Democratic majority, preventing the three branches of government from becoming a conservative hegemony.

Despite her small physical stature, the five-foot tall Ruth Bader Ginsburg left enormous shoes to fill on the U.S. Supreme Court. Regardless of her successor’s political affiliation, it is hard to imagine anyone accomplishing more for this country than the notorious R.B.G. However, we can still hope that her actions, bravery, and tenacity will inspire an entire new generation of politicians and constituents willing to stand up for what is progressive and what is right.

Subscribe to our newsletter for all the latest updates directly to your inBox.

Find books on RBG, Politics, Sustainable Energy and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Enjoy Lynxotic at Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page.