A Supreme Court justice who looks like me
OPINION: Heather Pinckney, executive director and board chair of the Black Public Defenders Association, is excited about the new perspective Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson—a former federal public defender—would bring to the high court.
Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joseph Biden’s nominee to be the 116th associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, just concluded four days of confirmation hearings.
Unlike President Regan’s nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman appointed to the court in 1981, Jackson’s nomination is unlikely to be unanimously confirmed.
As a nation, we are much more polarized today, with Jackson’s nomination prompting some commentators to criticize Biden’s vow to appoint a Black woman (Reagan made a campaign pledge to appoint a woman to the high court to shore up support among women voters), including one Georgetown professor who tweeted that Biden wasn’t going with “the objectively best pick” but a “lesser Black woman.”
Despite a handful of snipers and the ludicrous dog whistle demand of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson’s to see her qualifications, Judge Jackson’s credentials are unassailable and comparable to the other justices on the high court—108 of the 115 of whom have been white males.
As a four-foot, 10-inch Black woman defense attorney, I’m proud of Judge Jackson’s accomplishments, but I’m proudest of the new perspective she will bring to the high court.
Someone once said that what you see depends not only on what you look at but also one where you look from.
The daughter of former public school teachers who attended historically Black colleges and universities, Judge Jackson was a star debater at her Miami, Fla., public high school, received an A.B. magna cum laude graduate from Harvard University and a J.D., cum laude from Harvard Law School.
She has a proven commitment to ethics, justice, and the rule of law.
I’ve had the short person’s perspective since I was a child, especially when it comes to bullies. I was the one who always had something to say to bullies that I encountered while growing up, often to the point that my mother used to advise me to keep quiet before I found myself in fights that were not even about me.
But it is one of the reasons that I’m a defense attorney, to defend those who are often beaten down and disparaged by society.
Jackson would be the first former federal public defender to serve on the high court. No justice has had substantial criminal defense experience since Justice Thurgood Marshall retired more than 30 years ago.
Today, the majority of the high court justices have prosecutorial backgrounds.
Does it make a difference? Yes.
Public defenders are the ones who stand up for the vast majority of people charged with crimes in America. More than 90 percent of such cases, including lawsuits involving state laws, family law issues such as marriage and divorce, etc., are adjudicated in state courts. In some states, people with few nonviolent felony convictions can face mandatory life imprisonment.
As a defense attorney, I’ve learned to see past the crime and see the person, something that Judge Jackson knows well and emphasized during her 2021 confirmation hearings as a judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
She told the senators that during her time as a public defender, she was “struck” by how little her clients understood the legal process, despite the obviously serious implications of criminal proceedings for their lives. As a trial judge, Jackson said she took “extra care” to make sure that defendants were aware of what was happening to them and why.
“I speak to them directly, not just to their lawyers, using their names,” she said.
She reiterated that commitment in her 2021 remote commencement address to the graduating law class at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, noting that the graduates had a “once in a lifetime” experience because of the Covid-10 pandemic that “fundamentally altered the way you studied, and process, and learned.”
That shift in mindset, she said, gave them the “confidence to do hard things,” most importantly ensuring “equal justice under the law… to clients who might not be able to pay for your service.”
And that perspective makes all the difference in the world.
Confirming Jackson to the high court would bring an eminently qualified jurist, one who has not only the legal background but the Solomonic compassion needed on the highest court in the land.
Heather Pinckney is the executive director and board chair of the Black Public Defenders Association.
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