Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearings showed her greatest strength and biggest weakness.
On the second day of her confirmation hearings for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson revealed her greatest strength and greatest weakness: She is simply not a purely political animal, and she never quite learned how to talk like one.
Unlike several prior Supreme Court nominees, who flew down to Florida to lend a hand in the litigation over the 2000 election, Jackson wasn’t working for a political candidate prior to being tapped for the role. Unlike other recent nominees, who have served on the Starr investigation or worked in the Ronald Reagan administration to constrain minority voting rights, Jackson’s professional career, both in private practice and as a public defender, mainly involved being a lawyer, often on different sides of political issues. And as a federal judge with nine years of experience on the bench, she can tell you, in great detail, how she has applied the law to the facts in any given case, how she reconciled statutes that appeared to conflict, and how the Administrative Procedure Act is applied.
But what she cannot readily do, with the icy calm of a lifelong political operative, is offer up softball political answers to senators’ pointed political questions. Confronted time and again with tired and outdated questions about whether she is a “judicial activist” or “living constitutionalist,” she pivots to explain that she doesn’t so much have a judicial philosophy as a judicial “methodology.” And when she attempts to lay out that three-part methodology, it doesn’t precisely roll off her tongue, in the same manner as cute metaphors about “balls and strikes” or lashing oneself to a ship’s mast.
AdvertisementAsked by Sen. Dick Durbin to lay out her personal judicial philosophy in reference to past or sitting justices, Jackson on Tuesday again demurred: “I haven’t studied the judicial philosophies of all of the prior justices,” she said. “I will say that I come to this position, to this moment, as a judge who comes from practice, that I was a trial judge and my methodology has developed in that context.” This means that Jackson is at her most compelling when she is explaining how the Sentencing Commission guidelines are applied in a given case, or how she tries to explain the criminal justice system to a defendant for whom the entire machinery is impenetrable and opaque. Where she falters, often almost imperceptibly, is when she is asked about a purely partisan political issue that has absolutely nothing to do with how she has been doing her actual job for nearly a decade.
Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement AdvertisementTake, for example, her exchanges with Sen. Ted Cruz. The enduring mental image I will hold until the day I die will be of two side-by-side photos: Jackson at a table alone, attempting to explain that critical race theory is a concept taught at law schools which she neither studies nor relies upon as a jurist, while Cruz tries manfully to get her to endorse a children’s book, Antiracist Baby, taught in a school where she serves as a board member. On the one hand, a serious judge who has done years of work on actual legal issues in the trenches as a lawyer and jurist. On the other, the guy with an overblown image of anti-racist diaper babies gamboling behind his head. This split screen highlights the experiences of every intelligent woman and person of color who has dedicated a lifetime to painstakingly explaining their right to even be at that table. Despite their efforts, they are all too often waylaid by man-babies peddling and demanding distracting sound bites about issues that have nothingto do with the job for which they are auditioning.
AdvertisementIn her opening statement, Jackson suggested to the committee that “you may have read some of my more than 570 written decisions.” But for those senators who cannot be bothered to engage with her body of published work, there will always be children’s books that need banning.
AdvertisementThere is no better proof that Jackson is in fact a judge’s judge than the ways in which she described—in painstaking detail—how she approached sentencing in sex offender cases. Jackson laid out her methods, multiple times, in response to a widely debunked smear avoided by most of the GOP senators but seized upon by Sens. Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Marsha Blackburn. Jackson was careful to explain the kinds of evidence she must review in those cases, the crime’s impact on victims, and the standards necessary for imposing a statutory sentence. When she described how she did her job, she was spectacular. When distracted by hand-waving about politics that bears no relation to her job, she was apt to get rattled.
Advertisement AdvertisementPopular in News & Politics
- America Needs to Grow Up
- The Horrible Truth About Shaken Baby Syndrome Cases
- The Degradation of Donald Trump Attorney Todd Blanche Is Already Complete
- We Can Learn a Lot From the Weird Crew That Keeps Showing Up to Trump’s Trial
Late in the day on Tuesday, Jackson avoided saying which justice she has molded herself after, when invited to do so by Sen. Ben Sasse, by explaining that any theory or philosophy distorts the “input” that she is trying to assess neutrally, changing the outcome. She added that ideas about constitutional interpretation simply don’t come up much on the lower courts. Sasse continued to insist that she was either avoiding the question or hiding the ball. But what she was saying, what she continued to say, was that she has in fact been too damn busy being a judge for the last nine years to luxuriate in the academic debate-slash-roadshow proffered by Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer about modes of interpretation. In other words, there is an immense amount of privilege required to even possess a snappy trading card of a lofty “judicial philosophy” that actually has little to do with what a trial court judge does all day. Many of those elevator pitch buzzwords and metaphors are often ideological methodologies that can get in the way of actual neutrality.
Advertisement Advertisement AdvertisementIt’s quite refreshing to hear a judicial nominee decline the invitation to expound about catchy constitutional philosophy, when that philosophy can get in the way of actually doing law. At the same time, it’s quite depressing to watch that nominee being persistently lectured about her failure to espouse a catchy constitutional philosophy. It suggests, in yet another way, that even a nominee who does precisely what she is tasked with, brilliantly and fairly, isn’t deemed quite qualified unless she does it with all the abundant and ineffable self-confidence and tissue-thin claims to “philosophy” of a mediocre white man.
Tweet Share Share Comment(责任编辑:行业动态)
- NYT Strands hints, answers for August 29
- Snapchat's new mission: getting you to buy more stuff
- 10 hidden features in Apple macOS Mojave
- North Korea fires apparent SLBM off east coast
- Discover Secret Swimming Holes and Hidden History in Crystal River, Florida
- Spate of defections show Kim Jong
- Pyongyang continues strict COVID
- 持之以恒 生态文明建设不放松
- South Korea remains open to another summit with North Korea: minister nominee
- Flying spaghetti monster and unworldly life filmed in deep sea footage
- Wave of racist, xenophobic incidents reported across U.K. after Brexit vote.
- White House highlights possible N. Korean nuclear test this month
- Silent night as La Liga restarts with Seville derby
-
South Korean lawmakers brace for US election as Harris, Trump diverge on North Korea
Democratic presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris waves from the stage on Day 4 of ...[详细] -
Facebook employees revolt after executive appears at Kavanaugh hearing
Facebook is once again facing uncomfortable questions from employees about the actions of one of its ...[详细] -
Russian hackers are taking their cyber warfare to the next level
Russian hackers are upping the ante of their cyberattacks.The next level of cyber warfare may not be ...[详细] -
South Korea to propose talks with North Korea over pandemic support
Unification Minister Kwon Young-se / YonhapSouth Korea is to propose working-level talks with North ...[详细] -
50 Places to Eat and Drink Before You Die
A pizzeria that uses an active volcano as an oven in Guatemala. A soup that’s been simmering f ...[详细] -
[Newsmaker] Eight people indicted in audition show vote
Eight people were indicted on Tuesday in connection with a widening vote-rigging scandal involving t ...[详细] -
North Korean leader vows to 'preemptively' contain nuclear threats by hostile forces
Soldiers march in a military parade held to celebrate the 90th founding anniversary of the Korean Pe ...[详细] -
Trump hints US may use military force against NK if necessary
WASHINGTON -- US President Donald Trump hinted Tuesday that the United States may use military force ...[详细] -
“至正七年置”青花纪年铭文盖罐1939年,梁思成考察测绘高颐阙 资料图片成都矛石羊上石兽一座古老城市的背后往往是一篇绵延的历史长诗,人类开始学会直立行走,同其他类人猿逐渐划分开伊始,部落、城邦在漫长的 ...[详细]
-
Gender stereotypes are still alive and well in the online dating world, study says
Women, if you think it serves you well to write the first message after matching with a guy, you're ...[详细]
- NASA's new plan keeps Starliner astronauts in space until 2025
- Netflix CEO let Peter Thiel know damn well what he thought of Donald Trump
- New Japanese ambassador pledges to play 'bridge
- North Korea wary of COVID
- “精致小春姐”顾春芳:华丽白西装、镶钻水晶拖鞋,带来新兴凉果No.1
- This wholesome Twitter account compares Chris Evans to soft, fluffy golden retrievers
- Netflix CEO let Peter Thiel know damn well what he thought of Donald Trump