Ketanji Brown Jackson has prevailed against all odds: The Senate confirms her as the first black judge for the Supreme Court. Republican criticism rolled off the Harvard graduate’s flawless biography.

The last hurdle on the way to the top was comparatively low for Ketanji Brown Jackson. The African American was nominated by President Joe Biden for the vacant Supreme Court justice, and her Democrats have a razor-thin majority in the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris voting. Nevertheless, the hearings and the statements about her person in the small chamber of Parliament proved painful for Jackson.

During the campaign, Biden had already promised to nominate a black woman for the Supreme Court should a vacancy arise. “For too long, our government and our courts haven’t looked like America,” Trump said in February. “Now is the time for our (Supreme) Court to reflect the full talent and greatness of our nation.”

Fulfilling his promise to his progressive base is now also a personal success for the president – especially in view of the midterm elections in November.

A weird Nazi comparison

Not the color of the skin, but the qualification alone should decide on a nomination, the conservatives initially complained, not without reason. Only a year ago, however, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham voted in favor of Jackson’s appeal to the second-highest American court, the Court of Appeals in Washington. But now the influential senator described the judge as the preferred candidate of the “radical left”. Graham also accused her of activism, the lack of a strict legal philosophy and being too lenient with owners and distributors of child pornography.

In general, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas found that Jackson imposed far too severe a penalty on criminals. And because the judge used to represent Islamist inmates in Guantánamo as a public defender, Cotton resorted to an oblique and historically incorrect Nazi comparison. The Republican senator recalled Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson and his involvement in the Nuremberg trials after World War II: “You know, the last Judge Jackson left the Supreme Court to go Nuremberg and prosecute the case against the Nazis. This Judge Jackson might’ve gone there to defend them.”

Ultimately, however, Jackson’s nomination for the Supreme Court was confirmed by a vote of 53 to 47 on Thursday. Three Republicans also voted for the African American: Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney. The senators seemed to want to send a clear signal against an unhealthy politicization of judicial elections in the USA. He expects to not always agree with Jackson’s Supreme Court rulings, Romney tweeted.

I intend to vote in support of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation to be an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. My statement: pic.twitter.com/uGaxx8sJn5

— Senator Mitt Romney (@SenatorRomney) April 4, 2022

However, the three senators are not making themselves popular within the party with their position. Although experts confirm that Jackson’s sentences in child pornography cases are standard practice, far-right Congresswoman Marjorie Talyor Green has called the Republican dissenters “pro-pedophile.”

Undoubtedly, Jackson is a progressive judge. On questions about abortion rights, immigrant rights, or the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol, Jackson will judge in the interests of the Democratic Party. When it came to investigating possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Jackson found that former Trump adviser Don McGahn should testify before the House Committee, even against the president’s wishes. The White House had argued that courts had no jurisdiction over a dispute between the executive branch and the legislature. But Jackson wrote in her verdict: “The primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings.”

Studied at an elite university

Regardless of her affiliation, Jackson’s career has been a textbook one. Her father, a teacher and attorney for a Miami school board, sparked her interest: “He had his stack of law books on the kitchen table while I sat across from him with my stack of coloring books.” While she excelled in debating in high school, Jackson was one of only a few African American women to graduate from Harvard’s elite law school in 1996. It was there that the mother of two met her white husband, who now works as a surgeon.

Her family background allows Jackson to think outside the box. Her younger brother used to be a narcotics officer and served in the army in Iraq. Her brother-in-law is married to the sister-in-law of former Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan. Ryan also praises Jackson: “although our politics may differ, my praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, for her integrity, it is unequivocal.”

However, as gratifying as the confirmation may be for Biden and many African-American women in the USA, nothing will change in the ideological orientation of the Supreme Court with 6 conservative and 3 progressive judges. In the summer, Jackson, 51, will succeed progressive judge Stephen Breyer, for whom she once worked and who is now retiring at 83.

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