Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Defense Background Matters Too

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Mar 22, 2022

You might even call it “performative,” a recently fashionable put-down of speech or activism that appears to be aimed more at attention-grabbing or fundraising for a cause than with making a real difference for one’s cause.

It was inevitable that Judge Jackson’s confirmation hearings would become a stage for performative showboating. Her appointment won’t change the court’s 6-3 conservative direction, as she will replace another liberal, the retiring Stephen Breyer.

Yet, as much as has been made about her being the first Black woman to be nominated in the high court’s history, Jackson brings another type of useful diversity to the current court.

She’s set to be the first justice with a deep background in defense work since Thurgood Marshall, the high court’s first African American who stepped down in 1991 for health reasons.

Although legal scholars and political scientists endlessly debate whether gender makes a significant difference in legal interpretation, sound legal principles support the idea that the Supremes will benefit from the inclusion of someone who has a background in defense work.

In a well-worn adage by the great Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., which Judge Jackson cited in an earlier confirmation hearing, “The life of the law has not been logic. It has been experience.”

Jackson’s experiences include her family — on both sides of the law. Her younger brother is a former Baltimore police officer and a distant uncle was sentenced to life under federal drug charges. President Barack Obama commuted his sentence in 2016 at age 78 after more than 25 years in prison.

If confirmed, Jackson will also be the only justice on the new court with experience on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, a bipartisan, independent agency created by Congress in 1984 to reduce disparity and promote transparency and proportionality in sentencing.

I don’t expect Jackson’s background to calm all of her critics, but you could say that about any Supreme Court justice in these tumultuous times. The job is controversial by nature.

The main quality we should ask of justices is fairness, which is all that judicial nominees should ask of us. Judge Jackson’s nomination deserves at least that much.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)