It was exactly two years ago today when then-candidate Joe Biden stood on a South Carolina debate stage and made some news. “I’m looking forward to making sure there’s a Black woman on the Supreme Court,” the former vice president said. The Democrat added, “I am loyal. I do what I say.”
Nearly two years after, Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement, now-President Biden vowed to honor his commitment. The question wasn’t whether he’d nominate a Black woman, it was which of the qualified contenders he’d choose.
There was one seemingly obvious choice, and sometimes the obvious choice gets the nod.
In Barack Obama’s first year in the White House, for example, it seemed so likely that he’d nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor that ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos predicted it before there was even a vacancy. (We now know, of course, that he was right.)
More than a decade later, much of the political world so expected Ketanji Brown Jackson to be Biden’s choice that “likely Supreme Court nominee” was practically part of her name. And sure enough, the obvious choice will be the nominee. NBC News reported this morning:
President Joe Biden is expected to announce Friday that he will nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
The Supreme Court has had two Black justices and five women justices, but if confirmed, Jackson would be the first ever Black woman to serve on the high court.
The reason she was considered the odds-on favorite is that she brings an impressive record to the table. Jackson, a former Breyer clerk, is a respected jurist on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, widely seen as the nation’s second most important federal bench and a routine launching pad for Supreme Court justices.
She would also be the first justice since Thurgood Marshall with significant experience as a defense attorney — Jackson even worked as a public defender — which is a welcome change from the kind of legal work we’re accustomed to seeing from other Supreme Court nominees.
As for how she’ll be greeted on Capitol Hill, the public may be accustomed to some brutal confirmation fights, but Jackson’s odds of being confirmed are quite high. For one thing, she probably won’t need any votes from the Senate Republican minority: Filibusters for judicial nominees are a thing of the past.
For another, Jackson may well very well enjoy at least some GOP backing: Last June, her appellate court nomination came to the Senate floor, and while the vast majority of Senate Republicans voted against her, three GOP senators — Maine’s Susan Collins, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, and South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham — voted to confirm her.








