Biden search for black woman Supreme Court justice trouble
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It was enough of a headache to get Breyer off the court, but finding a replacement for him will be even worse. There are not that many black women in the upper reaches of the federal judiciary, and those who are could be tough sells for centrists in both parties. And Biden’s campaign promise is not the sort that he can quietly take back. The administration has repeated it over and over again, and when Breyer made his intention to retire official, the promise became the central focus of what is shaping up to be a bitter fight in which racial identity is pitted against professional qualifications.
The candidate who most fully embodies this struggle also happens to be the favored option among Democrats, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. She’s 50 and presents a relatively young option for Biden. Her resume also fits the bill for the high court. Jackson is a Harvard Law School graduate, where she edited the Harvard Law Review. She clerked for Breyer upon graduation....
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And it’s not just conservatives who worry that Jackson is not equipped for the job. Shortly after her name began circulating among court watchers, the legal writing professional Ross Guberman ran an analysis of Jackson’s work with his BriefCatch software. The results were not pretty, he found. Her prose has a tendency to be “plodding, perhaps even painful,” and her metaphors often “clash and clang.” And, he warned, “Judge Jackson appears unusually comfortable with the charged rhetoric that you see in many of Justice Sotomayor’s recent dissents.”
That last comparison could spell trouble. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was a great diversity pick on paper, turned out to be one of the Obama administration’s most embarrassing legacies. And in private, liberal legal gurus admitted this freely. “Bluntly put, she’s not as smart as she seems to think she is,” wrote Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe in a leaked memo. “And her reputation for being something of a bully could well make her liberal impulses backfire.” Nominating Jackson could pave the way for a generation of Sotomayors. “Will the next Justices be picked for their talents at cobbling together majorities — or for their knack for rallying the troops in dissent?” Guberman asked in his report.
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Sotomayor continues to be an embarrassment for Democrats as the recent hearing on Covid cases demonstrated. Putting another like her would also damage the Democrats and their preference for people based on identity politics instead of merit.
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