When liberalism is fast becoming out of fashion and racialism is raising hoods everywhere, the US has again made a history. Although it took more than 300 hundred years to welcome a black woman in its Supreme Court, during illiberal times this marks an effort to change the direction of wind. On April 7, Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed by the US Senate as the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. This is a milestone for the United States, a bright spot in the contemporary history of the US. The development is unique and unprecedented and marks a victory for President Joe Biden, who made good on a campaign promise as he seeks to infuse the federal judiciary with a broader range of backgrounds.
The former president of the US had converted the Supreme Court highly partisan by appointing judges that suited his party’s ideology. The vote to confirm the 51-year-old federal appellate judge to a lifetime job on the nation’s top judicial body was 53-47, with three Republicans – Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney – joining Biden’s fellow Democrats. A simple majority was needed, as Jackson overcame Republican opposition in a Supreme Court confirmation process that remains fiercely partisan.
What does it mean to have Jackson in the Supreme Court?
Jackson will take the 83-year-old Breyer’s place on the liberal bloc of a court with an increasingly assertive 6-3 conservative majority. Breyer is due to serve until the court’s current term ends – usually in late June – and Jackson would be formally sworn in after that. Jackson served early in her career as a Supreme Court clerk for Breyer.
Biden who hosted Jackson at the White House to watch the vote on television said, “Judge Jackson’s confirmation was a historic moment for our nation. We’ve taken another step toward making our highest court reflect the diversity of America. She will be an incredible Justice, and I was honored to share this moment with her.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer noted the country’s legacy of slavery and past struggles to bring rights to women and Black Americans, adding: “Today we are taking a giant, bold and important step on the well-trodden path toward fulfilling our country’s founding promise.” The resolve with which Jackson would work could be understood from her March confirmation hearings. Jackson said at that time “she would bring to the Supreme Court her life experiences and perspectives including time as a judge, a court-appointed lawyer for criminal defendants who could not afford an attorney, a member of a federal commission on criminal sentencing and “being a Black woman, lucky inheritor of the civil rights dream.”
American judiciary partisan for long
It is, nevertheless, surprising why a democratic country like the US had to wait so many years to induct a woman judge in its Supreme Court. But it has been done now and it marks a great event in the American history. Of the 115 people who have served on the Supreme Court since its 1789 founding, all but three have been white. It has had two Black justices, both men: Clarence Thomas, appointed in 1991 and still serving, and Thurgood Marshall, who retired in 1991 and died in 1993. Current Justice Sonia Sotomayor is the only Hispanic ever to serve. Jackson will become the sixth woman justice ever. For the first time, four women will serve on the court together. The other women to have served on the Supreme Court include current Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan and Sotomayor, the retired Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in 2020.
Presidential nominations to the Supreme Court have become a flashpoint in American politics, but President audaciously pursued this noble goal and a kind of great service to democracy. The court wields great influence in shaping American policy on hot-button issues including abortion, guns, voting laws, LGBT rights, religious liberty, the death penalty and race-based practices. Before Jackson joins it, the Supreme Court is due to rule in major cases including one that could overturn the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide and another that could expand gun rights.
Reuter’s reports: “Democrat Raphael Warnock, one of the Senate’s three Black members, said in the debate before the vote: “I’m the father of a young Black girl. I know how much it means for Judge Jackson to have navigated the double jeopardy of racism and sexism to now stand in the glory of this moment. … Seeing Judge Jackson ascend to the Supreme Court reflects the promise of progress on which our democracy rests. What a great day it is in America.”
Prognosis: Bidden is making American Power structure gender-wise and racially balanced?
Bidden Chose a woman colleague for the post of Vice President in the first instance and now first ever black woman judge in the Supreme Court- all these mean a movement away from gender bias and racialism. History would give credit to the President Bidden for this act intended to make the US democracy more inclusive. It is quite different from Donald Trump’s divisive policies and derogatory notions about women. It is but obvious that Republicans would not feel good about a black woman’s appointment in the highest court of the country. Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican, criticized Jackson in the debate, calling her the choice of the “radical left” and saying her “disturbing” judicial record included injecting personal policy biases in rulings and treating convicted criminals as gently as possible in sentencing. Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the first Black woman to hold that post after Biden selected her as his 2020 election running mate, presided over the vote. Biden appointed Jackson last year to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after she spent eight years as a federal district judge. Like the three conservative justices appointed by Biden’s Republican predecessor Donald Trump, Jackson is young enough to serve for decades in the lifetime job.
Way Forward: Course correction?
When the Courts in various countries of the world are seeing manipulation in appointments and compromising on the principles of representation and neutrality, the US has again showed the way. This is why it is leading the future of democracy. It had voted in frustration and impatience for Donald Trump in the name of bringing glory back to America, “To make America Great”, but the American people soon realized that they deserve better president who does not divide and prefer regressive and retrograde policies and uses government institutions against his rivals like Trump did. America has shown the path to all democracies that nations are not made on racial hate and divides and regressive moves and a forward movement in democracy is only possible by rejecting the authoritarian and divisive regimes. Nations are made “for all” in democracy and not for “the majority race” or “the powerful” in social and political structures. That is why despite various failures America still acts as a beacon of hope for all democracies. There is a lesson for all the democracies.