What is a Woman, Judge Jackson? We’ll See You in Court

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Apr 10, 2022

Legal scholars note that the framers of the Constitution did not mention women, who didn’t win the right to vote until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920.

And the legal doctrine of “coverture” in common law allowed women to own property and make contracts until they married, at which point their legal rights were legally absorbed into those of their husbands.

Fortunately we’ve progressed past such sexist attitudes, but not all sexism or the moral panic that identity issues can raise.

Supreme Court confirmation hearings increasingly have become a stage for political theater in the age of television, especially after Democratic senators blocked Judge Robert Bork’s nomination, leading dictionaries to add a new word, “borking,” for the systematic obstruction of a nominee by defamation or vilification.

Nowadays, it appears, everybody gets borked, even Jackson, whose confirmation does not change the court’s current six-to-three dominance by conservatives. She replaces liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, who is retiring this summer.

Let me give discredit where it is due. Blackburn was not alone in reaching for wild excuses to put on a good show for the cameras, voters and potential campaign donors.

Among other right-wing notables, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas went on a tear about a children’s book called “Antiracist Baby” by Ibram X. Kendi in the library of the elite private school in Washington where she sits on the board. Sens. Blackburn, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri tried to cast Jackson as soft on criminals, especially pedophiles — a word that makes one’s blood boil just to hear it.

But that’s not to say all Republicans have gone off the edges of reality. Sen. Ben Sasse, a Nebraska, Republican called out the “jackassery we see around here” of “people mugging” for the cameras.

Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois thanked a “majority” of Republicans, including Sasse, for handling themselves “professionally” and “in the best traditions of the United States Senate.”

Praise from Durbin won’t do Sasse much good in the Grand Old Party’s circles, but he told the truth.

As for what soon-to-be-Justice Jackson really thinks about the “What is a woman” question, her best answer for now might be, as the old saying goes, we’ll see you in court.

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