In selecting Ketanji Jackson Brown as the next Supreme Court Justice, President Joe Biden is placing a far-left progressive on the nation’s highest court. She may make retiring Justice Stephen Breyer seem quaintly moderate by comparison.
If the test for confirmation is qualifications based on a sterling resume, Jackson passes with flying colors. Her academic and professional credentials are impressive.
But if the test is something far more important such as fidelity to the rule of law and the Constitution, the answer is dramatically different. Her decisions as a federal district court judge were often capricious and designed to achieve a political outcome regardless of the established law and bedrock constitutional principles.
A disturbing number of her rulings were overturned by a higher court, sometimes unanimously. In one case, the reviewing court observed that her decision was made with “no legal basis to do so.” Such reversals are deeply troubling.
Reading Jackson’s past cases can be alarming. Her ruling on deportation appeared irrational at best. The result in a collective bargaining dispute was mind-boggling. Her smackdown of President Trump’s executive order holding government employees accountable for their own negligence and incompetence was utterly devoid of reasoning. These cases had judicial bias written all over them.
Jackson’s record is a window into her desire for partisan overreach. You get the very clear sense that she will be an activist justice sitting on the most powerful court in the land —the kind of jurist who looks at a case and says to herself, “This is the result I want… now how do I go about twisting and warping the law to get there?”
That is not what good and faithful judges do. They are supposed to be neutral arbiters of the law, not black-robed tyrants who legislate from the bench with their own policy dictates while ignoring the law and dismissing the Constitution.
An examination of her cases reveals that Brown Jackson will side with liberals on many of the most important issues of our day —free speech rights, affirmative action, gun rights, and abortion. Predictably, pro-choice groups have applauded her nomination.
Digging deeper into Jackson’s record raises other distressing questions. She zealously defended suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay. Is it any wonder that progressive groups across America are ecstatic over her lifetime appointment?
Biden was determined to pander to the radical left. He succeeded. He will also prevail in placing an aggressive liberal on the nation’s highest court. Democrats can confirm Jackson because they hold a majority in the Senate with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.
Biden vowed that he would govern as a moderate president. But his selection of Jackson to be the next justice on the U.S. Supreme Court belies that promise.
