Joe Biden has appointed a 51-year-old lawyer who has an atypical course: Harvard’s graduate, she has also worked at the Office’s Office and the Commission responsible for reducing racial inequalities in justice.
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By announcing Friday 25 February the appointment of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace Judge Stephen Breyer at the Supreme Court, Joe Biden justified his choice by history, as a form of reparation on injustices. “For too long, our government, our courts have not resembled America, he emphasized. It is time for the court to reflect all the talents and grandeur of our country.”
Out of a total of 115 judges in two hundred and thirty-two years, the Supreme Court of the United States has counted only two blacks (Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, who always sit there). If his appointment is confirmed by the Senate, Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, will be the third, and the first African American. She will also be the sixth woman. On nine judges, four will be women, an unthinkable proportion a few years ago.
Announced a few days from the end of the Black History Month, the month that celebrates the Black History, registered since 1976 in the national calendar, and in the presence of Kamala Harris, the first vice-president of color (according to the American expression), Joe Biden’s choice was hailed as a historic. “Comparable to the appointment of Thurgood Marshall, in 1967, by Lyndon Johnson, said the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Black Defense Center in Montgomery in Alabama. No doubt, like him, she will leave an indelible mark. Not only on the law but on our country. “
Solid criminal defense experience
Born in Washington in September 1970, Ketanji Brown grew up in Miami in a public system teacher home. His parents had known the segregation but had been able to go to the university and believed in the promise of civil rights. It was the time of the renewal of African roots. An aunt, who was a member of the Peace Corps in West Africa, had sent them a list of first names. They chose Ketanji Onyika (“the one who is pretty”).
Brilliant student, Ketanji Brown made the classic course of contenders to the Supreme Court, without being distracted by the brands of racism or hostility. Eloquency competition in high school, Faculty of Law in Harvard (1996), publisher of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. In 1999-2000, it was cleric to a judge of the Supreme Court, in this case Stephen Breyer (1999-2000), the magistrate who announced his retirement in January, and to whom it is called to succeed. Ketanji Brown Jackson was also a judge at the Washington Federal Court and had just been appointed to the Columbia District Circuit Court of Appeal, the country’s second largest court. A position for which it was adapted in 2021 in the Senate by 53 votes against 44. Three Republicans had supported it.
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