The United States Senate approved this Thursday the statement of Ketanji Brown Jackson to integrate the Supreme Court. It’s about a done historical: for the first time, a black woman accedes to the highest court.
Vice President Kamala Harris was at the head of the session in which, with perfect attendance of the hundred senators, the motion to approve Brown Jackson’s statement had 53 votes in favor and 47 against.
The 51-year-old judge had the support of the entire Democratic Party bench, 48 senators, plus two independent allies who usually accompany the ruling party in voting.
The Republicans, who opposed his nomination, suffered the loss of three senators who voted in favour. If there had been a tie, Vice President Harris would have broken the tie, in favor of the jurist.
President Joe Biden nominated the judge of the Court of Appeals for the Circuit of the District of Columbia last January, following the retirement of Stephen Breyer, an exponent of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court.
Brown Jackson’s name had already been considered by the Barack Obama administration in 2016, given the prospect of a vacancy appearing on the highest court.
Brown Jackson stood out with failures like the one in 2019, that stopped the deportations of illegal immigrants within the framework of Donald Trump’s harsh anti-immigration policy.
The Supreme Court has a marked conservative tendency thanks to the three appointments made by Donald Trump in his term. And that it will remain with the new judge, who replaces a judge from the progressive wing.
The most recent appointment was controversial, since in the middle of the 2020 campaign, Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dieswho had asked that, in the event of his death before the presidential replacement, the results of the elections be awaited.
Trump, with support from the Republican Party, nominated conservative Amy Coney Barrett, 48. Due to her age, and in the case of lifetime positions, she can remain in her position for 30 years or more, if she does not retire.
The same goes for the other Trump appointees, Neil Gorsuch, 54, and Brett Kavanaugh, 56.
Republicans blocked Obama’s entire last year in the White House from a possible nomination.after the death of conservative Antonin Scalia, in February 2016, on the grounds that it was an election year.
In reality, they managed to prevent the arrival of a liberal judge on a Court that, with Trump, deepened its turn to the right, since today 6 of its nine members belong to that ideological universe, despite the fact that there has always been a balance between conservatives and democrats.