Ketanji Brown Jackson, from failing law firm associate to embarrassing associate Supreme Court Justice

Bill’s post thanking Joe Biden for nominating Justice Jackson rather than a liberal jurist who could influence the Court reminded me of a post I wrote at the time of Jackson’s nomination. The thrust of the post was that Jackson’s career was remarkably undistinguished for a Supreme Court nominee or, indeed, a nominee for any judicial job. Before her rapid rise through the federal judiciary, she had been a failing law firm associate, a dispute resolution lawyer, and a staffer on the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Biden was always going to nominate a black female to the Supreme Court, but, as I noted, there were black female jurists to choose from who, unlike Jackson, would have added value to the Court.

Why, then, was Jackson selected? Because Joe Biden’s team decided not just that the next Supreme Court Justice must be black and female, but also that she must be devoid (and preferably incapable) of nuanced thinking and of a willingness to stray from leftist orthodoxy under any circumstances.

Jackson has fulfilled that role. She has done the job she was hired to do.

Should Biden have hired a less rigid, more capable jurist? Early on, I didn’t think so. I wrote:

I think the administration was correct in concluding that it is better served by a Justice who will reliably vote leftist as a matter of reflex, than by one who is intellectually curious and agile, and who thus might break ranks on occasion. Elena Kagan, age 62, can likely provide intellectual leadership for years to come, and the Democrats presumably will have other opportunities to nominate and confirm another top legal thinker.

But now, Kagan is 65 and the earliest the Democrats will be confirming another Justice is four years from now. There’s a 50 percent chance (give or take) that they won’t have that opportunity for at least eight years. Also, I hadn’t reckoned on Jackson being so off-putting to her fellow Justices.

So Bill is probably right to be thankful that Biden picked Jackson.

I doubt, though, that Jackson’s fellow Justices are grateful. Bill discussed the smackdown Justice Barrett delivered to her in the nationwide injunction case. By all accounts, Barrett is at least as collegial as any member of the Court. She appears with Justice Sotomayor, the next most leftist Justice, and the two stress the importance of respect and cordiality among Justices. For Barrett to have gone after Jackson in an opinion for a Court-majority is, as Bill said, telling.

Bill also noted that Sotomayor took a pass on signing her name to Jackson’s ranting dissent in that case. Jonathan Adler points out that this wasn’t the only case this term in which Jackson’s fellow liberal Justices have declined to sign her over-the-top dissenting opinions. Says Adler, Jackson “has staked out positions and made claims that appear to be beyond what her [liberal] colleagues are willing to sign on to.”

When a leftist judge has lost Sonia Sotomayor. . . .

Another thing to know about Jackson is that she talks too much in court. This has been true from the start:

Justice Jackson uttered more than 11,000 words during the Court’s first eight oral arguments [of her first term], nearly double the number by the runner-up Justice. Jackson’s words accounted for 24 percent of all those spoken by the nine Justices.

This term:

Jackson far exceeded her colleagues in the number of words she spoke during oral arguments. She uttered more than 79,000; Sonia Sotomayor, her liberal colleague, came in a distant second, at 53,000.

When a Justice exceeds Sonia Sotomayor’s oral output by 50 percent. . . .

Why does Jackson talk so much? She’s not using questioning to figure out how to decide cases. There’s seldom any doubt about how she’ll vote.

I doubt she’s using questioning to win over other Justices. Surely, few of them appreciate her monopolization of time any more than they appreciate her strident attacks on the Court.

It seems clear that Jackson likes the sound of her voice. In addition, I think she’s playing to the crowd, including the mainstream media that loves to write puff pieces about her, even as she embarrasses herself.

It might also be that Jackson, a failed law firm associate with shockingly thin credentials to be an associate Supreme Court Justice, is trying to display her legal reasoning chops (with the help, presumably, of bright law clerks).

It seems clear, however, that Jackson is not impressing her fellow Justices. As Bill said, “snarling doesn’t work.” Neither does long-windedness.