Judge Jackson

The Senate Judiciary Committee held its opening hearings this week on the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here is what you will read, hear and watch.

• If appointed, Judge Jackson would be the first black woman on the Supreme Court. 

• She would be the first public defender on the Supreme Court. 

• She is a protege of the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer and a graduate of Harvard Law. 

• Republicans repeat the mantra that a judge should call “balls and strikes’’ and not be a judicial activist. 

• Democrats hail her biography, her temperament and her brilliance. 

• The more thuggish Republicans, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton, have attacked her for not throwing the book at pedophiles (she did), serving on the board of a private school that teaches Critical Race Theory (it doesn’t), and representing accused terrorists as a lawyer (that was her job). 

Here is something you won’t hear, especially from the seven Republican senators from Southern States on the committee who should say it:

“I’m sorry.’’

“I am sorry for the role my state played in enslaving, killing, raping and systematically denying black people in this country the most basic human rights.”

“I am sorry that my predecessors in the U.S. Senate did not vote for the civil rights laws in the 1960s that guaranteed everyone the right to vote, to go to college, to sleep in a hotel or eat in a restaurant.’’

“I’m sorry that banks in my state denied mortgages to black people for decades, depriving them of the ability to buy a home and build generational wealth.”

“I am sorry that your parents and grandparents were sent to inferior schools because of the color of their skin.”

“And I am sorry for the legacy of racism that infected my state and this country, especially in the American South, where slavery caused a Civil War and continues to demean the aspirations of this country today.’’

That is what senators from Southern States SHOULD say to a black woman. This is what is owed a black woman. She doesn’t deserve to be confirmed because she is black. But she does deserve an apology and recognition by the senators from the South that they are in their positions of power as a direct result of the depredations imposed upon people of color in their states. 

This hearing is a chance to right wrongs, to take responsibility to account for the past, to atone. But these Republican senators did nothing on this issue. Indeed they seek only to retain the status quo.

The hearings on Judge Jackson’s nomination are mostly performative. Senators open by reading statements intended to be published in their media outlets back home so they can speak to their voters and raise money for re-election campaigns, not to discern the actual qualifications of the candidate 

The hearings are also filled with hypocrisy.  

Sen. Cruz attacked Judge Jackson for serving on the board of a private school while he sends his own daughters to private school in Houston. 

Sen. Graham, a former military lawyer, vilified the judge for representing accused terrorists at Guantanamo Bay - for, I repeat, doing her job. 

But beyond the specific issues raised by the Republican senators, it is their behavior toward Judge Jackson that is the most galling. They are rude. They are condescending. They are bullies. 

An old friend who is a very successful CEO told me that if he spoke like this to a customer or an employee, he would be fired on the spot by the board of directors. Not so in the U.S. Senate. 

Before she was born, to escape discrimination in their hometown of Miami, Fla., Judge Jackson’s parents moved to Washington, DC for new freedom and to work in the public school system. 

Some years later, they returned to Miami so her father could go to law school, something that would not have been allowed a decade earlier. Her family is not the radical, dangerous, activists Republicans hoped for. Her brother is a police officer who volunteered after 9-11.

Her parents worked hard to ensure Judge Jackson’s path was more clear than theirs, that she could be anything she wanted. And now she is.

You can read her bio here. It is extraordinary. 

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/23/who-is-ketanji-brown-jackson-bio-facts-background-political-views-00010970

But there’s more. 

As a young reporter in Nashville, TN, I spent two years covering the federal courts. I got to know judges and lawyers and slowly began to understand the criminal justice system.

When criminal defendants went before a federal judge, the ones with no money were represented by a lawyer called a federal public defender. It turned out, I learned, we taxpayers funded the defense of accused defendants who could not afford a lawyer. It was an eye-opening experience and an affirmation of the constitutional protections in the Bill of Rights. 

Of all the top qualifications of Ketanji Brown Jackson, I can’t think of a better reflection of the American Justice system than electing a judge who provided legal representation to all citizens.

The hearings will continue this week. And there is still time for a senator, any senator, to apologize to Judge Jackson for the actions of this country against people of her race. 

The Republicans can start by apologizing for their own behavior.