After US president Joe Biden announced earlier this week that he will nominate a Black woman to the US Supreme Court, focus lies on potential successors to retiring justice Stephen Breyer. Among them, experts feel that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson could be the first female black judge to be elevated to the top judicial post in the US.
Judge Jackson was born in Washington and worked as judicial clerk under Justice Breyer between 1999-2000. She graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. Former president Barack Obama nominated her to serve as a district court judge in Washington. Joe Biden earlier in 2021 elevated her from federal district court in the district of Columbia to US court of appeals for the DC circuit, according to a report by news agency the New York Times.
Jackson also was in the panel that heard two cases related to former president Donald Trump. She was the member of the panel which ruled that former counsel to Trump, Donald F. McGahn II, must testify in front of House impeachment investigators with respect to allegations that Trump tried to obstruct the Mueller inquiry, which probed the role of Russia in the US elections.
“Presidents are not kings. They do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control,” Jackson was quoted as saying by news agency the New York Times. The report also highlighted that she told Trump administration officials that their allegiance is to the Constitution.
She was also in the panel which heard the Trump challenge to congressional subpoena which wanted to access documents related to the Capitol Hill riots on January 6, 2021. Jackson is also related to Paul Ryan, the former vice-presidential candidate from the Republican party, by marriage. Jackson’s husband Patrick G. Jackson, a surgeon, is the twin brother of Paul Ryan’s brother-in-law.
Along with judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Biden administration is also looking at other potential successors – Leondra Kruger, J. Michelle Childs, Sherrilyn Ifill, Mellissa Murray, Holly Thomas, Eunice Lee, Candace Jackson-Akiwumi and Wilhelmina Wright.
Biden earlier said that a Black woman judge in the Supreme Court was ‘long overdue’ as the US Supreme Court in the two centuries had only five women nominated to the top judicial post.
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