Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court
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it is regrettable that Biden made such an issue of Judge Jackson’s race and sex.
He wouldn't be doing his job if his messaging didn't concentrate on race and sex and how virtuous his party is within those issues. If he's not appealing directly to casually racist progressive whites, who is he supposed to appeal to?
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Just looking at the top half of new federal appeals court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s resume, it’s clear she has the pedigree of a Supreme Court justice contender.
It lists Harvard University undergrad, Harvard Law School, the Harvard Law Review, and clerkships with three federal judges, including retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer.
But then, it stalls. For the next dozen years, she became a self-described “vagabond,” even toiling as a public defender, until then-President Barack Obama plucked her from obscurity for a district court judgeship.
The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said she handled 585 rulings, but little stands out. President Joe Biden elevated her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit less than a year ago, but she’s written just two decisions.
Now, as White House and Senate aides pour over her record to figure out her philosophical and political leanings to ready for her Supreme Court confirmation hearing, they have far less to review than typical court picks who’ve quickly moved up the judicial ladder.
And that’s becoming a problem for her supporters, who want to champion Jackson beyond just being the first black woman headed to the Supreme Court, and critics, who want something to sink their teeth into.
The Congressional Research Service even noted that much of her district court work was on procedural topics, not those the Supreme Court studies. “This uncertainty is especially pronounced when evaluating Judge Jackson because she has spent most of her judicial tenure as a district court judge,” the service said in a report reviewed by Secrets.
“Judge Jackson has resolved relatively few cases involving open constitutional questions, offering somewhat limited insight into what mode of constitutional interpretation she might follow in future cases,” the report added.
Josh Blackman, a professor at the South Texas College of Law in Houston, Texas, said Jackson’s path to the court was not only odd but provided little help in figuring out her philosophy.
“I've looked at her opinions," he said. "I don't see, you know, rock star. I don't see the superstar. She only had a couple of noteworthy opinions. I didn't hear her giving any sort of influential speeches. She didn't really write articles. There wasn't much that distinguished her. I mean, nothing. That's not a criticism. It wasn't bad, but it just wasn't that she was the greatest thing in the world."
What’s more, he added, is that she has no record of working with other judges to get them to agree with her view of constitutional law, a basic chore on the Supreme Court. “How is she going to persuade John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, or Amy Coney Barrett in a case? She has no experience doing that,” Blackman said.
We asked Blackman, a constitutional law professor, if the nomination was similar to Harriet Miers, picked by then-President George W. Bush but scuttled when critics said her experience wasn’t deep.
“I think it's actually worse because Harriet Miers, for all the criticism, was actually a pretty well-known attorney in private practice in Texas. She had a good reputation. She was White House counsel. People actually had papers to go on, but she hadn’t decided on the bigger constitutional issues. Jackson just doesn't have much of a record at all,” he said.
“It's sort of weird. It's a very thin record. Her credentials up to the clerkship, up to the [Supreme Court] clerkship, were sterling, and then after that, it kind of petered out, like she never sort of lived up to the potential that she could have had with the Supreme Court clerkship,” Blackman said. “It's a weird resume.”
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@Copper Yup, maybe that is why she was picked. Tough to vote against someone who has no opinions.
The problem for the democrats is that she may not turn out to be the judge they thought she would be.
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She will be. Look at her background. I think she will be to the Left of Bryer.
This is why many people who voted for Biden should be dragged out behind the barn and bored for simples. It's the Court, stupid.
Congress and the White House change folks on a regular basis. The Supremes are there for decades.
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Wow!!! President Obama wasnt even a Senator in 2003!!! 555
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"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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LOL
The WaPo article:How desperate can you get? This desperate: Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is pushing the argument that Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson is dangerously soft on sex offenders, child pornographers in particular.
“I’ve noticed an alarming pattern when it comes to Judge Jackson’s treatment of sex offenders, especially those preying on children,” Hawley tweeted. “I’m concerned that this [is] a record that endangers our children.”
Right, beware, America: Jackson, mother of two daughters, would be dangerous to your children’s health.
In the cherry-picked, context-free Hawley-verse, Jackson has been lying in wait to foist this child-endangerment scheme on the country since her law school days. Count one is her writing as a student editor on the Harvard Law Review, about sex-offender registries, DNA databanks and civil-commitment laws that states were busy enacting.
In her article, Jackson grappled with the tension between constitutional limits on permissible punishment and the community’s need for self-protection. Given conservatives’ focus on analyzing the text of a law rather than divining lawmakers’ intent, you might have thought that Hawley would cheer Jackson’s argument that in assessing the constitutionality of sex offender laws, “courts have relied too heavily on the legislatures’ intent.” But no.
Instead, Hawley wrenches a few lines out of context. “As far back as her time in law school, Judge Jackson has questioned making convicts register as sex offenders — saying it leads to ‘stigmatization and ostracism.’ ”
Hello, Senator? That is in a section headlined “The Critics” that outlines the views of the statute’s opponents. Hawley might just have easily quoted from the previous section — “commitment legislation literally immobilizes dangerous sexual deviants and, thus, presumably promotes both immediate and long-term public safety.”
It is fair to say that law-student Jackson came to the subject with a perspective sympathetic to civil liberties concerns — referring, for example, to “the current climate of fear, hatred and revenge associated with the release of convicted sex criminals.” It’s out of line to argue, as Hawley does, that Jackson has been “advocating” for “letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes” since law school.
Count two against Jackson is her work on the U.S. Sentencing Commission. “It gets worse,” Hawley tweeted. “As a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Judge Jackson advocated for drastic change in how the law treats sex offenders by eliminating the existing mandatory minimum sentences for child porn.”
This is cleverly phrased. Jackson didn’t argue for eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for child porn. She — and all the other members of the Sentencing Commission, Republican and Democratic — said that the mandatory minimum for receiving child porn should be reviewed, hardly a “drastic change.”
The law distinguishes between possession of child pornography (no mandatory minimum) and receipt of child pornography (five-year minimum). That makes no sense in the current technological universe, in which possession almost always involves receipt, through the Internet.
Consequently, the Sentencing Commission recommended in 2012 “that Congress align the statutory penalties for receipt and possession” of child pornography — and, if it wanted to keep a mandatory minimum, make it less than five years.
The underlying issue was whether the existing guidelines were unduly stringent given the increasing use of computers to share large numbers of images. Because of changes in technology, four of the six factors that generated longer recommended sentences “are now being applied routinely to most offenders” and consequently result in “overly severe guideline ranges for some offenders.”
The final count against Jackson involves how she, in Hawley’s assessment, “put her troubling views into action. In every single child porn case for which we can find records, Judge Jackson deviated from the federal sentencing guidelines in favor of child porn offenders.”
Sounds terrible, right? Except because the guidelines are so outdated and therefore unfair, that’s what judges do in almost every case — 70 percent, according to the latest statistics.
According to data compiled by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, judges imposed below-guidelines sentences in nearly 80 percent of child pornography cases in the District of Columbia, where Jackson was a trial court judge before being elevated to the appeals court. In Missouri, Hawley’s home state, judges imposed sentences below the guidelines in more than 77 percent of cases.
Douglas Berman, an expert on sentencing policy at Ohio State University, reviewed Jackson’s sentences in child pornography cases and pronounced them “not at all out of the ordinary.”
Hawley’s attack is part of a broader Republican barrage seeking to portray Jackson as soft on crime (she was a public defender) and supportive of terrorists (she advocated for Guantánamo Bay detainees as a public defender and in private practice). Such representation, of course, is in the finest tradition of American lawyering; its necessity is enshrined in the Constitution.
But now we are reduced to this kind of smarm from the Republican National Committee, recycling Hawley. “A pattern of advocating for terrorists AND child predators,” deputy rapid response director Kyle Martinsen emailed reporters. “What other criminals is Ketanji Brown Jackson an advocate for?”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t stoop quite that low, but close enough: “Her supporters look at her résumé and deduce a special empathy for criminals,” he said.
Funny, I look at her résumé and deduce a special empathy for the Constitution. If only that were more widely shared.
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Anyone following the hearings?
Teh Ted was (ahem) ruthless today.
Cotton got her to say that drug trafficking is a "victimless crime."
Teh Ted also said that the White House is not giving the same information about the nominee to Democrats and Republicans.
Teh Dick said that the GOP is coming close to crossing the line of civility.
ETA: No one asked about her yearbook or her calendar in college, not even "Boofementhal."
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@George-K said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
Anyone following the hearings?
Teh Ted was (ahem) ruthless today.
Cotton got her to say that drug trafficking is a "victimless crime."
Teh Ted also said that the White House is not giving the same information about the nominee to Democrats and Republicans.
Teh Dick said that the GOP is coming close to crossing the line of civility.
ETA: No one asked about her yearbook or her calendar in college, not even "Boofementhal."
Ted is correct. IIRC, the Whitehouse is witholding 28,000 pages of documents.
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For any Supreme Court judge, what is the requirement of documents to give from the White House?
(On another note - 28,000 pages!!!!!
My life file would be boring by comparison!! LOL) -
@taiwan_girl said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
For any Supreme Court judge, what is the requirement of documents to give from the White House?
Not sure that there really is any such "requirement."
But as a matter of honesty and (cough) ethics, you'd think that all the documents would be available to all members of the committee.
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When you’ve lost Andrew McCarthy…
DON’T let them eat cake.
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@jon-nyc said in Biden to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court:
When you’ve lost Andrew McCarthy…
His column is more an indictment of Hawley's objections (and Cruz's, I assume).
Here's what he thinks of the nominee, in more detail:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/ketanji-brown-jackson-biden-supreme-court-pick-andrew-mccarthy
