Biden Would Consider Nominating Garland for the Supreme Court Again
(CNN)President Joe Biden'due south choice of Ketanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court came about similar so many of his big decisions: after a long procedure, with a lot of wavering and discussion, and ultimately landing right where he had been headed from the outset.
This is how Biden works. He starts with a strong gut feeling, but then he reads, and asks for more to read. He talks it through, seemingly endlessly, repeatedly picking up the phone to consult. He'll think about it some more. And so maybe just one more phone call.
Eventually he makes up his mind, guided by a sense of fate and poetry that longtime friends and directorate have witnessed time and time over again.
"It's totally in line," said Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, "with who he is."
Biden had a hunch nearly Jackson's moment of destiny early on, friends tell CNN.
He noted that she was a former clerk to Justice Stephen Breyer, whom she would supersede on the court. The first fourth dimension she was confirmed by the Senate had been to serve on a sentencing commission that Biden, then a senator from Delaware, had helped create. Her nomination to be the commencement Black woman on the courtroom could come in Blackness History Calendar month, a bow to liberty and freedom at home right when those values were nether attack away.
Perhaps just every bit important was this powerful rhyme with Biden'south own life story:
"There are those who told her she shouldn't gear up her sights too high," the President said Friday as he introduced Jackson to the world, "but she refused to accept limits others set for her."
Aware that Biden had noticed this fact of Jackson'southward biography, people who know him well say they weren't surprised by his final call. Just as in his other big political decisions -- to run in 2020, for example, and to pick Kamala Harris every bit his running mate -- a long deliberation with much back and forth landed Biden where he had wanted to go in the first place.
Any Supreme Court nomination is a major moment for a president, and this 1 even more so, due to the historic nature of Jackson as the pick. Simply this moment comes with extra layers of fate and legacy for Biden.
Almost exactly two years ago, Rep. Jim Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, offered his crucial endorsement at an existential moment for the survival of Biden'southward primary campaign, contingent on Biden'south promising to nominate a Black adult female -- and and then, when Biden forgot to say so publicly during a argue in Charleston, South Carolina, Clyburn rushed backstage during a commercial interruption to remind him. Biden's subsequent win in the S Carolina chief became a watershed moment in radically reshaping the primary race and making him the nominee.
Actuarially, Biden knows this is likely to be his simply Supreme Court nominee, even if he wins a second term. The next oldest justice after Breyer, who is 83, is Clarence Thomas, who is 73 and would clearly be inclined to hold on as long as he could to cease a Democratic president from diluting the court's conservative majority past replacing him.
From the beginning, Jackson was the leading contender -- though an assistants official noted that the President had given "considerable weight" to fellow finalists Usa District Judge J. Michelle Childs and California Supreme Courtroom Justice Leondra Kruger.
Biden didn't interview Jackson for the nomination until Feb. xiv, in a meeting that the White Firm managed to continue entirely under the radar, along with Biden's conversations with the other two finalists on the same 24-hour interval. Merely knowing that Breyer was likely going to retire this jump -- despite top White House aides, on the President's orders, gingerly avoiding any direct pressure on him -- Biden had prepared over the last year by reading Jackson'due south opinions and other writings, along with those of other contenders.
Those mattered to Biden, a sometime Senate Judiciary Committee chairman who had presided over six confirmation hearings himself -- including Breyer'due south. But a senior assistants official said Biden too was taken by Jackson's life story. She may be notwithstanding another Ivy League-educated nominee—her resume includes both beingness in a theater class as a Harvard undergrad doing "Waiting for Godot" with Matt Damon and after served on the Harvard Law Review with future Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Only she's the daughter of two public schoolhouse teachers and administrators who started out as a federal public defender and rose to be a federal appellate judge.
A former Biden adjutant who was not involved in the selection procedure just knows the President's mentality well noted that Biden was briefly a public defender himself and likely connected to Jackson's choosing that task despite coming out of Harvard Law, where most of her classmates took high-paying jobs. "He believes fundamentally that people who should be the president and be on the Supreme Court should exist people who at their cadre are public servants," the onetime adjutant said.
A new spot in the pipeline
Jackson's nomination comes with extra appeal for a President who is eager to keep up a record-making stride of judicial nominations and who believes that part of the mission of his presidency is trying to pull the country abroad from the partisan abyss that has enveloped Supreme Court confirmations, forth with everything else. In October 2020, appealing to Senate Republicans not to blitz for the sake of flipping the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat earlier that twelvemonth's elections, Biden said, "Our land faces a option -- a choice about whether we can come up back from the brink."
White House Counsel Dana Remus first called Jackson 6 days after Biden'due south inauguration, to see if she'd be interested in replacing Merrick Garland on the powerful federal Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Garland's nomination as attorney full general came with its own layers of poetry from his nomination to the Supreme Court by and so-Presidernt Barack Obama in 2016, which Republicans blockaded. But another appeal for Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, whose starting time task for Biden was as an aide on the Judiciary Committee, was that information technology would open up Garland's seat on a court that has go a pipeline for time to come Supreme Court nominees.
If Jackson is confirmed, now Biden will be able to tee up some other potential future Supreme Court nominee -- and mayhap another history-making 1 -- for a president in the years to come. (Childs has already been nominated for another spot on the DC circuit court.)
Clyburn had pushed hard for Childs, a young man South Carolinian whom he knows personally and professionally, even managing to line up signals of support from home state GOP US Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott if Biden had picked her. But while Biden had agreed to hope Clyburn that he'd selection a Black woman, he didn't hope which Blackness woman, and as gracious and thankful as the President is for the congressman'south endorsement, he and shut aides from the entrada have chafed at the suggestion that Clyburn won the presidency for him.
"I'm Blackness and I'thou a Southerner, and I'll practise everything I can to promote Southerners and Black people who are deserving of attention for public office," Clyburn told reporters afterward Jackson's nomination was appear. "When you play the game, you may not e'er win. But if you don't play the game, you will never win."
Biden called Jackson on Thursday evening to extend the offering.
"How are you?" Biden asked on speakerphone when she picked up, sitting behind his desk in his private office.
"I am wonderful," she said.
"Well, you're going to be more wonderful -- I'd like you to get to the Supreme Court, how about that?" he said.
"You deserve it," he added. "You're incredibly well qualified, and I think the courtroom should look similar the state."
They spoke for a few minutes. She accepted the job, although with the events in Ukraine, they weren't quite sure when the President would be able to tell the globe.
Plenty fourth dimension had gone past, though. Biden had made upwards his mind. Now he wanted to get moving to confirmation.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/26/politics/ketanji-brown-jackson-biden-scotus-pick/index.html
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