HCR - New Supreme, Ukraine

Click here for another excellent article from Heather Cox Richardson today, February 25, 2022.

Joe Biden nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit as the next Supreme to replace the retiring Stephen Breyer (interesting coincidence: Jackson at one time clerked for Breyer).

The Republicans will attack her, of course, as they would any Democratic appointment.  For instance,

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said it was “extremely inappropriate” for the president to nominate a Supreme Court justice just days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and she said that “Biden is putting the demands of the radical progressive left ahead of what is best for our nation.”

Blackburn is one of the worst Senators and regularly spouts inanities. The idea that Biden should put everything else aside while the U.S. deals with the Ukrainian situation is preposterous, of course. HCR says:

In contrast to Blackburn, one could see the act of nominating a justice in the midst of a crisis in the same way President Abraham Lincoln thought about holding the 1864 election in the midst of the Civil War. In November of that year, he told a group of visitors that no one had been sure that a democratic government could survive in times of emergency, but he believed that if an emergency could interrupt the normal process of democracy, “it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.” Holding the election was itself a victory for the rule of law.

Jackson has expressed some opinions in the past that are right on point today:

Similarly, it seems to me a mistake to characterize Jackson as a part of a “radical progressive agenda” unless democracy itself has become such a thing. Jackson’s tightly reasoned briefs show a focus on democracy that is similar to that of her mentor, Breyer. She has become famous, for example, for a 2019 opinion rejecting the idea that a president’s advisors cannot be compelled to testify before Congress. “Presidents are not kings,” she wrote. “This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control. Rather, in this land of liberty, it is indisputable that current and former employees of the White House work for the People of the United States, and that they take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Like Breyer, as well, Jackson has a “reputation for pragmatism and consensus building,” according to former president Barack Obama, who nominated her as a district judge.

Republicans will say she is too inexperienced (she's 51).  Let's compare her experience with that of the last SCOTUS appointment, by Trump: Amy Coney Barrett:

Barrett is 50. She spent two years as a judicial law clerk, then worked in private practice for 3 years, from 1999 to 2002 (she joined Roberts and Kavanaugh as one of the future Supremes working on Bush v. Gore, overturning the people's popular choice for president.) She then was a law professor until 2017, when Trump nominated her to the Supreme Court -- without spending a day of her life as a judge.

Here's a brief rundown of Jackson's career:

She was a law clerk for two years, spent a year in private practice, then clerked for Breyer for two years before returning to private practice. She was vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Comission for five years; then in 2013 she was confirmed (with unanimous Senate consent) as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She's been a judge in one of the two most important Districts in the country, the other being the Southern District of New York (Wall Street), for 8.9 years.

HCR says:

Anticipating criticism suggesting that Jackson’s judicial experience has been brief, Vladeck also compiled a chart of the judicial experience of all Supreme Court justices since 1900. The information showed that Jackson’s 8.9 years of prior judicial experience is more than four of the justices currently on the court—Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Elena Kagan, and Amy Coney Barrett—had combined. It's also more experience than 4 of the last 10 justices had at their confirmations, or 9 of the last 17, or 43 of the 58 appointed since 1900.

From there, HCR moved on to discuss Ukraine. It's only been a few days, but so far at least, things are not going entirely Putin's way: He is meeting stiff resistance both from the Ukraine military and from dissidents on the home front:

Putin needed a quick victory in Ukraine, and the heroic resistance of the Ukrainians has made that impossible, buying time for pressure against him to build. Last night, 1800 Russians were arrested for protesting the war at rallies around the country; prominent Russians, including the children of leading businessmen and lawmakers, are speaking up against the invasion.

When Facebook fact-checked Russian state media accounts and put warning labels on them, the Kremlin limited Russians’ access to the site, where they were sharing their anger at Putin’s war. Apparently, ill-trained Russian conscripts are shocked to be on the front lines in Ukraine—Russian law says only volunteer troops are supposed to be used there.

 That's important: Ukrainian resistance has provided time for the pressure against Putin to build. On that subject, she says:

Putin is rapidly becoming isolated. Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the invasion and calling for an immediate end to hostilities and the withdrawal of Russia’s troops from Ukraine, but it was notable that China, India, and the United Arab Emirates abstained rather than vote. Also today, President Milos Zeman of Czechia and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, both of whom have been supporters of Putin, came out strongly against the invasion. So did Romania and Bulgaria. Kazakhstan has refused to send troops to Russia.