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.
Great post. There have been three Jacksons on the Supreme Court. I don't know anything about the first Jackson, but the second one, Robert Houghwout Jackson, was a luminary on the Court despite his opinion in Wickard v. Filburn, which loosed the dogs of the interstate commerce clause. He didn't go to college and didn't get a law school degree, but he was, in my opinion, the best writer who ever sat on the court, and, like Justice Frankfurter, was balanced in the positions he took and the language he used to support them. Katanji Brown Jackson holds undergraduate and law school degrees from Harvard, but she can't hold a candle to the minimally-educated Jackson. Given Brown Jackson's pedestrian career and limited talents, her Harvard degrees say more about Harvard than they say about Jackson. Jim Dueholm
If she is trying to make up for her poor credentials by demonstrating her legal reasoning ability she is doing a very poor job of it. Imagine being her clerk and watching the clerk's of every other justice write real valuable opinions or dissents while you have to prepare her leftist rants?
Great post. There have been three Jacksons on the Supreme Court. I don't know anything about the first Jackson, but the second one, Robert Houghwout Jackson, was a luminary on the Court despite his opinion in Wickard v. Filburn, which loosed the dogs of the interstate commerce clause. He didn't go to college and didn't get a law school degree, but he was, in my opinion, the best writer who ever sat on the court, and, like Justice Frankfurter, was balanced in the positions he took and the language he used to support them. Katanji Brown Jackson holds undergraduate and law school degrees from Harvard, but she can't hold a candle to the minimally-educated Jackson. Given Brown Jackson's pedestrian career and limited talents, her Harvard degrees say more about Harvard than they say about Jackson. Jim Dueholm
If she is trying to make up for her poor credentials by demonstrating her legal reasoning ability she is doing a very poor job of it. Imagine being her clerk and watching the clerk's of every other justice write real valuable opinions or dissents while you have to prepare her leftist rants?