Biden to nominate Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court
President Joe Biden is making the nomination for the seat to be vacated by Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, who will retire at the end of his term this summer.
US President Joe Biden will nominate federal appeals court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court on Friday, according to two people familiar with the matter, making her the first black woman selected to serve on a court that he once declared that his race did not deserve citizenship and endorsed segregation.
With Jackson, Biden fulfills a campaign promise to make the historic appointment and further diversify a court that was made up entirely of white men for nearly two centuries. He has chosen a lawyer who would be the first former public defender of the high court, although she also has the elite legal experience of other judges.
Jackson would be the second black person on the current court: Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative, is the other, and only the third ever.
The news was confirmed by two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss it ahead of the president’s official announcement later on Friday.
She would also be the sixth woman to serve on the court, and her confirmation would mean that for the first time four women would sit together on the nine-member court.
The current court includes three women, one of whom is the court’s first Latina, Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
Jackson would join the liberal minority of a conservative-dominated court that is weighing cuts to abortion rights and consider ending affirmative action in college admissions and restricting voting rights efforts to increase representation of women. minorities.
Biden is making the nomination for the seat to be vacated by Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, who will retire at the end of his term this summer.
Jackson, 51, once worked as Breyer’s paralegal early in his legal career. She attended Harvard as an undergraduate and law school student, and served on the US Sentencing Commission, the agency that develops federal sentencing policy, before becoming a federal judge in 2013.
His nomination is subject to confirmation by the Senate, where Democrats hold a narrow 50-50 majority with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker. Party leaders have promised swift but deliberate consideration of the president’s nominee.
[ With information from The Associated Press ]
