WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 (Xinhua) -- US President Joe Biden announced at the White House on Feb. 25 that he had nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for the Federal Circuit as a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. If the nomination is approved by the Senate, Jackson will become the first African-American female U.S. Supreme Court justice.
American public opinion believes that Biden's move has multiple considerations such as winning the support of African Americans and consolidating the liberal power of the Supreme Court justices. In addition, the election war for justices is launched in the midterm election year, which is likely to further intensify party strife and exacerbate social rifts.
African American women
The U.S. Supreme Court is the final appeals court of the U.S. judicial system, with the power to review and overturn lower court decisions, and is the ultimate interpreter of the U.S. Constitution. The court has 9 justices, including 1 chief justice. The Justices may serve for life after taking office. In the court's more than 230-year history, 115 people have served as justices, but this does not include women of African descent.
This is the U.S. Supreme Court filmed in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 25. (Xinhua News Agency, photo by Shen Ting)
Biden announced the decision on Jackson's nomination in a speech at the White House on the 25th, calling on the Senate to quickly approve it. Jackson then spoke, saying that if approved, he hoped that her life and career would inspire future people.
Jackson, 51, a graduate of Harvard Law School, has been a judge of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for the Federal Circuit since June 2021. During her legal career, she also served as a judge in the District Court for the District of Columbia, vice chairman of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, assistant federal public defender, and also practiced law firms.
After liberal Justice Stephen Breyer announced he would retire at the end of January, Jackson, a former clerk at Breyer, became a popular successor. Some analysts believe that Jackson's legal concept is similar to Breyer's and is favored and supported by radical left forces in the United States.
One of Jackson's best-known rulings was made when she was a judge in the District Court for the District of Columbia. In November 2019, she wrote in a ruling that then-U.S. President Donald Trump could not generalize about using executive privilege to obstruct White House officials from being investigated by Congress, and that the lesson of U.S. history over the past 250 years was that "presidents are not kings." This was reported by various media outlets in the United States at that time.
Multiple considerations
Biden's nomination of Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court was considered to have multiple considerations.
The first is to enlist the support of African-American voters. The United States will usher in the midterm elections in November this year, but Biden's performance in office is lackluster, and the democratic party in which he is based is not optimistic. Biden also had a poor election in the Democratic primary of the 2020 US presidential election, but he reversed the initial decline by promising to ensure that African-American women will be elected to the Supreme Court, winning the support of African-American voters. Charles Bulllow, a New York Times columnist, believes that making good on his promises now will be a major achievement for Biden and will also help consolidate Democratic support among African-American voters.
Biden (front) prepares to leave after attending a rally on Democratic Party Caucuse Night in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., on Feb. 3, 2020. (Xinhua News Agency, photo by Joel Reiner)
The second is to consolidate the liberal forces in the Federal Supreme Court. During the presidency of Republican Trump, three conservatives nominated to become Supreme Court justices, changing the ratio of conservatives to liberals from 5 to 4 to 6 to 3. Liberals close to the Democratic Party's political views are not only outnumbered, but also older, averaging more than 70 years old. Conservative justices, on the other hand, are only 62 years old, with the youngest just turning 50. Jackson's replacement of Breyer would not change the conservative and liberal landscape of the Supreme Court, but it would allow the liberals to become younger and secure their current seats, at least for a while.
In addition, the threshold for the nomination of Supreme Court justices through the Senate is a simple majority. Both parties currently hold 50 seats in the Senate, and if the number of votes for and against is equal, Vice President Harris, as president of the Senate, can cast a tie-breaker vote. This means that even if no Republican senator votes in favor, Democrats can get the nomination through, so Biden doesn't have to worry too much about nominating Jackson.
Lead to party strife again
Due to the special status of the U.S. Supreme Court and the tenure of justices, the political tendency of justice candidates has a significant impact on American society. Especially this year, the Supreme Court will consider and rule on several popular social topics such as abortion, affirmative action, and guns, and the importance of justice candidates is even more prominent.
On May 27, 2021, people held signs reading "Stop Gun Violence" in a ceremony at The Plaza of San Jose City Hall in California, U.S.A., to mourn the victims of the previous day's shooting in the city. (Photo by Wu Xiaoling, Xinhua News Agency)
The battle of opinion over Biden's nomination began weeks ago. The White House and Democrats highlighted the historic significance of African-American women as justices and the incompetence of nominees for the position, while Republicans accused Biden of playing the "race card" as a form of reverse discrimination.
The CNN article argues that the bipartisan reaction to Jackson's nomination reflects the party content of the Supreme Court justice nomination war. In the past, for a long time, most of the nominations of justices could win the broad support of both parties in the Senate vote, but in recent years, due to the influence of political polarization, the nomination of justices has become an important battlefield in the party struggle, and the voting is basically strictly divided according to the party, and American society is constantly torn apart in this struggle.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently acknowledged that partisan differences may affect the U.S. public perception of the independence and impartiality of the Supreme Court, and that more and more politicians and the media have questioned the court, and many have even dismissed it. As some of the norms of the justice nomination process are broken, political polarization in the United States is likely to intensify further.