Page 4
March 23, 2022
‘Without Fear or Favor’
Continued from Front
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an opening on the federal appeals
court in Washington, just down the
hill from the Supreme Court.
The American Bar Association,
which evaluates judicial nomi-
nees, has given Jackson its highest
rating, “well qualified.”
Janette McCarthy Wallace,
general counsel of the NAACP,
said she was excited to see a
Black woman on the verge of a
high court seat.
“Representation matters,” Wal-
lace said. “It’s critical to have di-
verse experience on the bench. It
should reflect the rich cultural di-
versity of this country.”
The Republicans are trying to
use Jackson’s nomination to brand
Democrats as soft on crime, an
emerging theme in GOP midterm
election campaigns. Biden has
chosen several former public de-
fenders for life-tenured judicial
posts. In addition, Jackson served
on the U.S. Sentencing Commis-
sion, an independent agency creat-
ed by Congress to reduce disparity
in federal prison sentences.
Sentencing expert Douglas Ber-
man, an Ohio State law professor,
wrote on his blog that Jackson’s
record shows she is skeptical of the
range of prison terms recommend-
ed for child pornography cases,
“but so too were prosecutors in the
majority of her cases and so too are
district judges nationwide.”
Biden chose Jackson in Febru-
ary, fulfilling a campaign pledge
to nominate a Black woman to
the Supreme Court for the first
time in American history. She
would take the seat of Justice
Stephen Breyer, who announced
in January that he would retire af-
ter 28 years on the court.
Jackson once worked as a
law clerk to Breyer early in her
legal career.
Democrats are moving quickly
to confirm Jackson, even though
Breyer’s seat will not officially
open until the summer. They have
no votes to spare in a 50-50 Sen-
ate that they run by virtue of the
tiebreaking vote of Vice President
Kamala Harris.
But they are not moving as fast
as Republicans did when they in-
stalled Amy Coney Barrett on the
court little more than a month af-
ter the death of Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg and days before the 2020
presidential election.
Barrett, the third of President
Donald Trump’s high court picks,
entrenched the court’s conserva-
tive majority when she took the
place of the liberal Ginsburg.
The court revealed Monday
that Justice Thomas, the oldest
member of the court at 73, was in
the hospital being treated for an
infection but that he did not have
COVID-19.
Last year, Jackson won Senate
confirmation by a 53-44 vote, with
three Republicans supporting her.
She is married to Patrick Jack-
son, a surgeon in Washington,
who sat in the audience with their
two daughters, one in college and
the other in high school. Jackson
wiped away tears as his wife ex-
pressed her love for him.
She is related by marriage to
former House Speaker Paul Ryan
of Wisconsin, who was the Repub-
lican vice presidential nominee in
2012. Ryan has voiced support for
her nomination.
Jackson has said her children
have kept her in touch with reality,
even as she has held a judge’s gav-
el since 2013.
In the courtroom, she told an
audience in Athens, Georgia, in
2017, “people listen and gener-
ally do what I tell them to do.”
At home, though, her daughters
“make it very clear I know noth-
ing, I should not tell them any-
thing, much less give them any
orders, that is, if they talk to me
at all.”