U.S. Circuit Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was molded by her predecessor, the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer — and, like President Joe Biden, she came with a rounded resume bolstered by her work as a public defender.
As President Biden considered a handful of Black women for the Supreme Court, two things drew him to U.S. Circuit Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, according to those familiar with his decision making process. Jackson was molded by her predecessor, the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer; and, like Biden, she came with a rounded resume bolstered by her work as a public defender.
For Biden, a former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee who spent much of his career shaping and scrutinizing the judicial system, choosing a Supreme Court nominee is arguably one of the most, if not the most, important duties of his presidency. “It spoke to him in an important way,” retired Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe said of Jackson’s public defender years. “He understood in a way that a president who had not himself been a public defender might not have been able to understand just what that meant and why it gave her a distinctive perspective.”
Tribe said he communicated to the White House early in the process that he favored Jackson, whose opinions he studied along with those of the other prospective Supreme Court nominees. He mentioned her “analytical brilliance” as well as her experience on the sentencing commission, district court and, for the last eight months, on the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. Tribe also underscored her empathy, another trait closely associated with Biden himself.
But they were hemmed in by other political realities. A 50-50 Senate made a typically precarious process even more dicey; a war in Ukraine drew the president’s attention elsewhere. Ultimately, the president took a few more days from Breyer’s retirement to the nomination of a replacement than former President Barack Obama did to put forward Justice Sonia Sotomayor for retired Justice David Souter’s seat.
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