Tag Archives: US Supreme Court

Ketanji Brown Jackson: President Biden’s Nominee to The United States Supreme Court

It’s unfortunate that Jackson will be forever tainted as Biden’s “first Black female” pick. What’s the next pick? The first Asian female? I submit that Ketanji Brown Jackson’s professional qualifications, achievements, and life experiences would have prevailed on the philosophy of ” Meritocracy” in our Democracy.

As protocol, the encumbent President of the United States gets to nominate someone of his choice. It was President Trump’s choice of Amy Coney Barrett before this. This time around it’s Ketanji Brown Jackson.

This is a short excerpt from The New York Times:

There have been three main career paths to becoming a federal judge in recent decades: defending corporate clients, serving as a prosecutor or working in politics. 

She spent seven years as a corporate lawyer, in Boston and Washington, including a year at the same boutique firm where Barrett once worked and Kavanaugh spent a summer.


She spent two and a half years as a federal public defender in Washington, representing defendants who could not afford to hire a private lawyer. In that role, unlike many other legal jobs, she could not choose whom she did and did not represent.

More from The New York Times

Her parents worked as public-school teachers and administrators, and Jackson graduated from a public high school in the Miami area (the same one that Jeff Bezos attended). If she is confirmed, she would become only the third public high school graduate on the new court, along with Alito and Kagan. “Every other member of the court is a graduate of a Catholic high school,” The Times’s Linda Greenhouse has written. All the justices — as well as Jackson, a Harvard graduate — attended private colleges.

I like the fact that she is from a public school. Any position in the public offices of the United States should be open to all who are qualified. Privilege and Pedigree should not be requisites in these opportunities.