US President Joe Biden and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson watch the US Senate vote on whether to approve Judge Brown’s appointment to the US Supreme Court in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 7, 2022. / Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images.
Washington D.C., Apr 7, 2022 / 14:26 pm (CNA).
Ketanji Brown Jackson, a federal judge who also served as a federal public defender and a private practice lawyer, will become the first black woman to sit on the Supreme Court.
The Senate voted 53-47 Thursday to confirm Jackson, President Joe Biden’s pick to succeed Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer, for whom Jackson once clerked.
Three Republican senators — Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitt Romney of Utah — joined with the Senate’s 50 Democrats to secure Jackson’s confirmation.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, the Senate majority leader, said Jackson’s historic confirmation reflected Democrats’ commitment to bring greater diversity to the U.S. judiciary. Biden pledged during his presidential campaign to choose a black woman as his first Supreme Court nominee.
“We certainly have a long way to go on the road to true justice, but by confirming Judge Jackson today, we are taking a bold step forward towards reaching the full realization of our country’s promise,” Schumer said.
“We will make it far more likely that girls across America will feel precisely what Judge Jackson felt herself when she was a kid: Nobody can stop me. I can do this, too. I am brilliant, too. I belong, too.”
Viewed as a progressive, “activist” judge by her conservative critics, Jackson won’t change the ideological balance of the court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority.
Nor will she participate in the upcoming Mississippi abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson, which many abortion opponents see as the best, and possibly last, chance to overturn the landmark 1973 decision Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion nationwide. A decision in Dobbs is expected at the end of June, just before she joins the court.
But at age 51, Jackson could serve on the nation’s highest court for decades to come.
Pro-life opposition
First nominated to a federal judgeship by President Barack Obama, Jackson had few direct dealings with the abortion issue as a U.S. District Court judge for the District of Columbia and an appellate court judge.
But her nomination drew strong opposition from pro-life groups. They pointed to the enthusiastic support her nomination received from Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the U.S., and a legal brief she co-authored as a private practice lawyer they say denigrated pro-life sidewalk counselors.
“Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation fulfills President Biden’s promise to the abortion lobby and raises the stakes of this year’s critical midterm elections,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the national pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List, said in a statement Thursday.
“As we await a decision in the Dobbs case, momentum is growing nationwide to protect unborn children and their mothers. Americans of all stripes want to modernize our extreme laws that allow abortion on demand up to birth, well after science shows babies in the womb feel pain. More than ever we need pro-life champions in the states and Washington who act on the will of the people and represent their values.”
After several days of questioning Jackson, the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday deadlocked, 11 to 11, along party lines, on whether to support her nomination. The tie vote made it necessary for the Senate to approve procedural steps to clear the path for a vote by the full Senate Thursday afternoon.
Democrats on the judiciary committee praised Jackson as a distinguished, even-handed jurist whose confirmation as the first black woman Supreme Court justice would mark a historic, inspirational milestone in U.S. history.
Republicans, on the other hand, criticized her for what they saw as her record of judicial activism, and some Republicans maintained that she showed undue leniency in her sentencing of convicted child porn offenders, a charge her supporters denied.
Despite the pro-life opposition Jackson faced, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a self-described pro-life Democrat and Catholic, voted in favor of her confirmation.
“Today, I was proud to cast my vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States,” Manchin, a Catholic, said in a statement Thursday.
“Judge Jackson’s record and career are exemplary. She has shown tremendous grace through what has been a difficult confirmation process and has proven without a doubt that she has the temperament and credentials to serve on our nation’s highest court,” he added. “In doing so, she has bravely paved the way so future generations may follow in her footsteps.”
Federal experience
Born in Washington, D.C., Jackson grew up in the Miami area and earned her undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University, where she was the editor of the Harvard Law Review.
After her clerkship with Breyer, Jackson entered private practice and later served as a federal public defender in Washington, D.C., and vice chair and commissioner for the United States Sentencing Commission, a bi-partisan independent federal agency, prior to becoming a federal judge.
Jackson watched the confirmation vote Thursday with Biden at the White House. They are scheduled to give remarks together Friday afternoon at a White House ceremony.
[…]
““As a founding principle of our country, we have always welcomed immigrant and refugee populations, and through the social services and good works of the Church, we have accompanied our brothers and sisters in integrating to daily American life,” Bishop Mario Dorsonville, auxiliary bishop of Washington and chair of the US bishops’ Comittee on Migration, said Jan. 2.”
Someone needs to take a remedial US history class.
SOL,
Which part of US history did you think they need a remedial class on?
Who are most Americans originally if not immigrants?
I’d agree it’s not correct to say that we have always, at all times welcomed immigrants and refugees but we certainly have done that selectively. And Catholics have for the greater part been among the groups of immigrants not warmly welcomed.
We need immigration to counteract the current birth dearth but we don’t have to have open borders or risk our national security. There should be a reasonable and humane approach to immigration.
Has it occurred to you that mass immigration is a cause of the drop in birthrates? By driving up the cost of living (housing, heath care, taxes, etc.), while depressing wages, it makes family formation so much more difficult.
Tony,
Birthrates are plummeting globally with or without immigration. Even government incentives to have a replacement level birthrate have failed.
Hungary is offering tax incentives for families and hopefully they’ll have some success.
Mrscracker,
The founding American people were not immigrants but colonists/settlers. They didn’t enter into a pre-existing polity and receive citizenship or some other form of membership from another people. The whole “America is a land of immigrants” myth was created by leftist subversives even if used by 20th ce nationalists for their own purposes after the fact, more than 3 centuries after the first British colonists started settling this country. Many of the founding fathers after the revolution even explicitly wrote on the question of whether anyone non-British should be allowed to immigrate to the US.
This original Anglo-American (and Protestant Christian) heritage and identity is what the left is trying to erase and unfortunately too many Catholic bishops are assisting in this, even if the bishops seek to replace it with some vague “Catholic” identity.
This system is currently in a stage of collapse, and continued immigration will further destabilization and increase the likelihood of wide-scale violence, regardless of how necessary believers in infinite economic growth say immigrants are for that.
SOL,
Good morning!
My daddy’s side of the family has been here for 400 years. I went to the UK a few years ago and visited the parish church of a 17th century colonial ancestor. In his memorial he’s referred to as “Henry the Immigrant” because he migrated to the American Colonies.
🙂
You know, the longer your ancestors have lived in North America the more likely you are to find non Anglo Saxon ancestry or ancestors who came as convicts. The American colonies were a dumping ground for thousands of British convicts until the Revolutionary War. After that, the British had to turn to Australia and Tasmania to dump their unwanted.
Beyond chattel slavery, folks of African ancestry have been here for 400 plus years. Many were free people of color and many intermarried with white colonists.
And of course, our American Indians have their own perspectives on immigration.
History is complicated and the more you look at it, the more humble you feel. Most of us have very modest beginnings and sometimes, we find very surprising narratives along the way.
Your argument seems to be that, since we are all the descendants of immigrants (in the broadest sense of the word), there is no justification for this nation (or really, any nation) to have a restrictive immigration policy. Apparently, this Ellis Island sentimentalism must override all other political, social, cultural and economic considerations. Does a country have a right to try to maintain its ethnic and cultural balance by limiting who is allowed in?
More mindless, liberal rubbish from bishops who seem utterly incapable of, not to mention unwilling to, speak in anything other than left wing cliches. Will they ever declare solidarity with the American people?
Looked up the bishop in question.
Wikipedia: Mario Eduardo Dorsonville-Rodríguez (born October 31, 1960) is a Colombian-born bishop of the Catholic Church in the United States.
Like Jose Gomez, another immigrant who is presumptuous enough to lecture Americans about American history and identity.
Thanks for the information. I suppose the good bishop has admonished the elites in Colombia on the need to clean up the corruption and to improve the nation’s economy that has apparently created such intolerable conditions.
Wish the bishops (and the nuns!!) would show a little solidarity with the dyslexic/dyscalculaic/etc community.
.
Just because dyslexics frequently have high intelligence does not mean they all go to MIT and walk out with $75,000 starting income.
.
Many suffer socially as well as educationally and the job situation upon adulthood can look bleak. As many prisoners are dyslexic, I think it is a good bet if it was caught early in school, we’d have fewer children in trouble and fewer adults in prison.
.
I mean no ill will toward those looking for a better life, but we have plenty of hurting children/adults who were born here. Don’t they deserve the same concern?
Tony,
North Americans, with the exception of those descended from our Indian tribes, are all the product of quite diverse immigrant populations from the past 400-500 years. I dislike the term “diverse ” because it’s become a cliche, but it really does describe our immigrant history.
I don’t think race or ethnicity should even enter into a Catholic conversation regarding what to conserve in America. Color and ethnicity simply don’t signify but culture does.
A Judeo Christian culture is what conservative Christians and others should be concerned about preserving. Not Anglo Saxonism. Culture, not color is what’s critical.
And yes, I strongly believe that sovereign nations have a right to secure their borders and enforce immigration laws. And preserve their unique cultures. But you have to have enough population to ensure a functioning society to pass that culture down to. Societies that are ageing and not reproducing themselves won’t be capable of that and will eventually be replaced.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Immigrants – they are ambassadors of the Good News.
All of them? How so? In what way?