Since Justice Stephen G. Breyer announced his retirement from the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson assumed the front-runner's position to replace him. On Friday morning President Joe Biden named her his nominee, and if she is confirmed she will become the first Black woman on the court.
Jackson, 51, is not the head-and-shoulders most credentialed of the three leading candidates that were under consideration — Leondra Kruger, a California Supreme Court justice, has an equally impressive resume, and at age 45, she would have the longest potential term on the court. Nor does Jackson have the political muscle of the other stellar candidate, U.S. District Court Judge J. Michelle Childs, 55, who had support from South Carolina Rep. James E. Clyburn and Sen. Lindsey Graham.
But she has the strongest claim to confirmability on terms the Biden administration can claim as bipartisan. She was confirmed in June to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the second-most important court in the country, with the support of three Republican senators. It would be a feat of almost impossible political gymnastics for those three — Graham, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — to turn against her so soon. On Friday, former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan tweeted, "Our politics may differ, but my praise for Ketanji's intellect, for her character, and for her integrity, is unequivocal."
The monthlong nomination process, rapid by recent practice, can fairly be summarized as a search for some reason in the records or personalities of the other candidates to justify a marginally greater chance at bipartisan confirmability than Jackson presents, and a failure to find one.
That is not to say that the case for Jackson consists of confirmability alone. She checks a lot of boxes for Biden and the court.
Jackson's nomination fulfills the pledge Biden made, with his back against the wall at a South Carolina debate, to nominate a Black woman to the court. Publicly limiting his choices on the basis of race and gender has drawn criticism from Republicans, but no less an avatar of Republicanism than Ronald Reagan campaigned on a similar pledge, vowing to nominate the first woman on the court and later appointing Sandra Day O'Connor.
Moreover, on the merits of the criterion, there is broad acceptance of the idea that the court ideally should resemble the country, and in any case, voters chose Biden knowing he had made the pledge, a sufficient endorsement in itself.
Jackson is an unequivocally well-qualified nominee. She has the same sort of platinum-plated resume as the other justices: Harvard College and Harvard Law School, hot shot law firms and three prestigious clerkships, culminating with service for Breyer, who has described her as "great, brilliant, decent."