Well before he was the Democratic nominee for President, Joe Biden pledged that if given the chance, he’d nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. The announcement that he’d consider both race and sex in selecting a Supreme Court nominee—that his decision would be race- and sex-conscious, rather than “blind” to those characteristics—was perhaps more explicit than previous such pledges. But it was no different in kind from, for example, President Ronald Reagan’s pledge to put the first woman on the Supreme Court.
Following Justice Stephen Breyer’s January announcement of his retirement, President Biden made clear that he intended to follow through on his campaign promise, vowing from the White House that when replacing Justice Breyer, “The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience, and integrity, and that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court.”
Biden’s doubling down on his campaign promise was met, perhaps predictably, with charges from the right that Biden’s pledge was “offensive”; that his eventual nominee would be the beneficiary of a “quota”; that Biden’s process entailed elevating “skin color over qualifications.”
Read More: What Ketanji Brown Jackson Will Be Asked During Her Confirmation Hearings
There’s every reason to believe that any selection process would have led the President to his nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Judge Jackson is superbly qualified by the standards of any era. She’s not only a brilliant legal mind, but also as credentialed as a nominee gets: top legal degrees and clerkships, broad and deep experience in both government and private practice, and nearly a decade of distinguished service on the federal bench,…
Source : time
