To underline the symbolic nature of this appointment, Kamala Harris, the first black woman to become vice-president of the United States, chaired the voting session.
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Joe Biden hailed a “historic day”. The US Senate confirmed Thursday, April 7, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, of which she will be the first black magistrate. All the elected representatives of the Democratic Party and three moderate Republican senators voted to bring this brilliant 51-year-old lawyer into the American temple of law.
This magistrate had been chosen at the end of February by the Democratic president, who had promised during his campaign to appoint, for the first time, a black woman to the highest judicial institution in the country, 233 years old.
As if to underline the symbolic nature of this nomination, Kamala Harris, the first black woman to become vice-president of the United States, chaired the voting session.
Of the 115 justices who have served on the Supreme Court so far, there have been only five women – four white and one Hispanic – and two black men, one of whom, Clarence Thomas, was appointed by George Bush Sr. and still sits. At the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson will replace the progressive magistrate Stephen Breyer, 83, who will retire at the end of June.
President Biden has repeatedly touted the “extraordinary skills” of this Harvard graduate, who has experience in private and public life; and served as a lawyer and federal judge. This is for the Democratic leader his first appointment to the high court whose mission is to ensure the constitutionality of laws and to settle important societal debates in the United States, such as abortion or same-sex marriage.
However, this vote will not change the balance of power within the prestigious college of nine magistrates. Donald Trump has indeed had the opportunity to appoint three judges to the Supreme Court, anchoring the case in conservatism, possibly for several decades.