(TheLibertyRevolution.com)- Even before President Joe Biden could officially announce the decision, news of his pick for the Supreme Court nominee spread all through media choices.
Biden’s selection to replace retiring liberal Justice Stephen Breyer is Ketanji Brown Jackson, who will become the first-ever Black woman to be nominated to the high court.
Ahead of making an official announcement, Biden tweeted that Jackson is “one of our nation’s brightest legal minds and will be an exceptional Justice.” The White House also called her an “exceptionally qualified and historic nominee.”
Jackson emerged as Biden’s choice after the White House said the president “conducted a rigorous process” to identify Breyer’s replacement. Sources close to the process said that while other people were considered, Jackson was the leading contender almost right from the beginning.
Others who were considered for the position were Leondra Kruger, a justice in the California Supreme Court, and Judge Michelle Childs.
Jackson once clerked for Breyer during a term in 1999. She also once clerked for Massachusetts federal Judge Bruce M. Selya from 1997 to 1998. In addition, she was a public defender in Washington, which gives her a different perspective than many of the other justices on the Supreme Court.
Former President Barack Obama appointed Jackson as a commissioner to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Then, Biden himself elevated Jackson to the DC Circuit court just last year.
Her background as a criminal defense lawyer would make her unique on the high court, if she were to be confirmed. As Jeffrey Toobin, a legal analyst for CNN said:
“[Jackson] would be the only justice in a very long time with experience as a criminal defense lawyer. It hasn’t been since Thurgood Marshall that anyone with criminal defense experience has been on the court.”
Toobin praised Jackson and said she was a good selection. He added:
“Judge Jackson has everything. She is impeccably qualified by all the traditional measures. She was a graduate of Harvard Law School. She clerked for Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, sort of like Brett Kavanaugh clerked for Anthony Kennedy, whom he replaced on the Supreme Court.”
Many liberals instantly praised Jackson and Biden’s decision to nominate her for the high court. But, similarly praise wasn’t given by some prominent Republicans in the Senate.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham — who voted to confirm Jackson in 2021 to the DC Circuit, and who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee — tweeted that this nomination “means the radical Left has won President Biden over yet again.”
Graham was obviously disappointed that Childs, a judge in his home state of South Carolina, will not be the nominee. His tweet continued:
“The attacks by the Left on Judge Childs from South Carolina apparently worked.”
And in a separate tweet, he wrote:
“I expect a respectful but interesting hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Harvard-Yale train to the Supreme Court continues to run unabated.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also released a statement Friday that congratulated Jackson, yet criticized her pick at the same time. It read:
“I also understand Judge Jackson was the favored choice of the far-left dark-money groups that have spent years attacking the legitimacy and structure of the Court itself.
“I congratulate Judge Jackson on her nomination. I look forward to meeting with her in person and studying her record, legal views and judicial philosophy.”
