Two years to the day that Joe Biden made the campaign promise to appoint a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court, he selected Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as his choice. As expected, some committed racists objected. However, Judge Jackson is so qualified that objections were relatively mild.
There are only nine members of the court, and theoretically the Supreme Court is supposed to represent the diverse elements of the nation’s population. However, four present members of the Court are graduates of the Harvard Law School. There has been no profound objection to that affirmation, and she is not expected to encounter any opposition because she is a Harvard alumna.
Judge Jackson was recently approved by the Senate to become a member of the D.C. Federal Court of Appeals, a post which is viewed as the place to prepare outstanding jurists for a seat on the Supreme Court. If the Republican senators who voted for her approval for earlier judicial posts do so again, Judge Jackson should be approved without Democratic reliance on the vice president’s vote.
Black Americans should be aware that one of the benefits of their membership in the Democratic Party is to have a jurist on the Supreme Court who is sensitive to legal issues that are relevant to civil rights and the full participation of Blacks in the affairs of the nation.
