When he nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, President Joe Biden not only picked an eminently qualified jurist to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, he also chose someone who has a prior legal skirmish with former President Donald Trump which didn’t go the way the ex-president was hoping.
Josh Gerstein of Politico notes that a ruling Jackson issued against Trump in 2019 made it clear she doesn’t have a problem speaking her mind, even when she’s doing so in response to the president of the United States:
When the House’s lawsuit seeking to enforce a subpoena against former Trump White House Counsel Donald McGahn was randomly assigned to Jackson in 2019, the consensus among court watchers was that Trump was likely to be fileted. What emerged from Jackson was an 118-page jeremiad that did not mince words in dissecting Trump’s claim that his advisers had an absolute right to ignore Congressional subpoenas at his direction.
“Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings,” Jackson wrote, dismissing the longstanding argument as “a fiction” and “a proposition that cannot be squared with core constitutional values.”
Such a ruling will likely lead some Republicans (i.e. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who claimed the choice had been made by Biden after pressure from the “radical left” ) to brand Jackson as a liberal, activist judge who will try to legislate from the bench, but her record doesn’t support such a ludicrous allegation:
“There’s very little there that can legitimately be characterized as radical. She’s a judge who takes pains to find and apply the law in an evenhanded manner with a balanced tone,” said Tomiko Brown-Nagin a constitutional law scholar and dean of the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute.
Judge Jackson is a former public defender, which gives her a unique perspective on the legal process that most Supreme Court justices (the majority of whom are former prosecutors) don’t possess. That experience alone will make her a welcome addition to the highest court in the land.
Also, knowing how Trump likely feels about Jackson makes her appointment even sweeter. She’s exactly the sort of jurist he would never have given a second look, if only because of the color of her skin.
