Ketanji Brown Jackson Political Views

The Senate confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court on Thursday by a 53-47 vote.

When soon-to-be Justice Jackson takes her seat this summer (retiring Justice Stephen Breyer plans to stay on until “the Court rises for the summer recess this year”), the Supreme Court will be more diverse than it has ever been.

Not only will a Black woman serve as a justice for the first time in American history, but the Court will, for the first time, have four women. It will also have three people of color for the first time in its history.

It’s a historic moment. As Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said at the beginning of Jackson’s confirmation hearing, her confirmation shatters a glass ceiling: “It’s a sign that we as a country are continuing to rise to our collective, cherished, [and] highest ideals.”

But Jackson will join a Court that has, at best, a tenuous relationship with those ideals.

The current Court, with its Republican supermajority, is more hostile toward voting rights — and specifically to the proposition that states may not write election laws that discriminate on the basis of race — than any Court since the Voting Rights Act became law in 1965.

Indeed, the current Court may be more hostile to efforts to achieve racial equality than any Court since Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

Jackson’s confirmation means that she will have a seat at the literal table where the justices meet to cast their initial votes in argued cases. But her voice is likely to do little to sway her six Republican colleagues in the most closely watched and most important cases.

As Irin Carmon wrote during the week of Jackson’s nasty, brutish, and far-too-long confirmation hearing, “if there’s any problem with Jackson’s likely confirmation to the Court, it’s that she may give voters more confidence in an institution that currently doesn’t deserve it.”

Jackson’s mere presence on the Court is a tribute to more than 400 years of struggle to ensure that all Americans will enjoy the blessings of political equality, regardless of race or gender. But she joins it at the very moment that the Court is taking the wrong side in this struggle.