{"id":29132,"date":"2022-02-25T16:50:36","date_gmt":"2022-02-25T16:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/?p=29132"},"modified":"2022-02-25T16:50:36","modified_gmt":"2022-02-25T16:50:36","slug":"how-ketanji-brown-jackson-could-change-the-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/2022\/02\/25\/how-ketanji-brown-jackson-could-change-the-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"How Ketanji Brown Jackson Could Change The Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

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After several weeks of mild suspense, President Biden announced that he\u2019s nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson, who currently sits on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court. Now, the Senate is hurtling toward its fourth Supreme Court confirmation hearing in five years. Jackson, who is the first Black woman ever to be nominated to the court, has support from several progressive groups<\/a>. If she\u2019s confirmed, she\u2019ll probably move the court\u2019s Democratic-appointed bloc even further to the left \u2013 although it\u2019s not clear from the data we have just how liberal she\u2019ll be. <\/p>\n

Jackson\u2019s nomination is historic \u2014 she\u2019s poised to become the first Black woman and the first former public defender<\/a> to serve on the nation\u2019s highest court. But unlike with the previous<\/a> two battles<\/a> over potential justices, the ideological balance of the court isn\u2019t about to change. Jackson, if confirmed, will replace another justice nominated by a Democrat, which means the court will still be dominated by a six-justice conservative majority.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean Jackson\u2019s worldview won\u2019t matter if she ends up on the Supreme Court \u2013 after all, she\u2019s likely to serve for decades. Based on her professional background and her previous rulings, she\u2019s likely to be a more liberal justice than Breyer was, and one who will probably be less willing than Breyer to compromise with the court\u2019s conservatives. That could mean the court \u2013 like every other political institution these days \u2013 is about to become even more polarized.<\/p>\n

Predicting how potential justices will rule when they get their Supreme Court robes is a tricky business. According to one prominent metric of Supreme Court ideology, though, Jackson looks pretty moderate. As the chart below shows, her Judicial Common Space<\/a> (JCS) score would place her toward the middle of the current Supreme Court, slightly to the right of Justice Elena Kagan and well to the right of Justice Sonia Sotomayor. According to those scores, she\u2019s also a middle-of-the-road judge on the court where she\u2019s currently serving.<\/p>\n

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