What Republicans won’t tell you about Biden Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson

By all indications, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson would be a moderately liberal justice in the mold of Justice Stephen Breyer. She would not change the Supreme Court’s overall ideological composition, though her life and legal practice experiences could make a real difference in some cases.

Jackson, who was a federal District Court judge until her recent appointment to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, has issued over 500 decisions since joining the bench.

Analysis of Jackson’s decisions places her toward the middle of the current Supreme Court and to the right of Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, the most liberal members of the high court, according to FiveThirtyEight.

This, however, hasn’t stopped the right from opposing Jackson.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, who voted for Jackson to serve as a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court just eight months ago, appeared to oppose her nomination, tweeting that “the radical Left has won President Biden over yet again.”

“We must not blindly confirm a justice to serve as a rubber stamp for a radical progressive agenda,” said Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also said Jackson was “the favored choice of far-left dark-money groups that have spent years attacking the legitimacy and structure of the court itself.”

There is no apparent basis for these attacks. They are merely an effort by the right to use the confirmation to rally their base. Absent from their vituperative comments is any acknowledgment of Jackson’s sterling credentials.

In the world of law, resumes don’t get better than hers. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, she clerked for federal district and circuit judges as well as for Breyer. She had extensive practice experience in a variety of settings and has been a federal judge for almost nine years.

By all accounts, she is a terrific judge.

Since Jackson would be replacing one of the three liberal justices appointed by Democratic presidents, she would not change the current ideological balance of the court. Six conservative justices appointed by Republican presidents will still comprise the majority.

But that doesn’t mean there won’t be cases in which her presence would make a difference. As a Black woman, she brings experiences that no other justice has. Justices remarked that having Thurgood Marshall on the court affected their views on racial issues as he discussed his experiences as a Black man. Likewise, justices noted that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman justice, influenced how they saw some matters.

Jackson also brings unique experience: She will be the only justice ever to have been a public defender. It’s in cases involving policing and the criminal justice system that she’s most likely to be different from Breyer. It’s often forgotten that Breyer was a frequent and sometimes decisive vote in favor of law enforcement.

Jackson is 51 years old. If she served on the Court until she’s 90, the age at which Justice John Paul Stevens retired, she would be a justice until 2061. There’s no way to know how her judicial ideology would evolve or how the composition of the court will change over the next few decades, but based on all of her accomplishments, she is deserving of swift and easy confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court.