By June, the Supreme Court will rule on whether or not universities can utilize racial criteria when selecting candidates for enrollment. The University of North Carolina and Harvard, two of the most prestigious universities in the country, are both involved in pending disputes.
Analysts think that Black and Latino pupils will feel the most impact from the cases’ resolutions. After her confirmation hearings last year, the lone Black woman on the conservative-leaning court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, declared that she would recuse herself from the case against Harvard.
Jackson, who obtained her bachelor’s and law degrees from Harvard, was a member of the university’s board of overseers. She did not handle admissions during her time at the university, but she did provide counsel on strategic matters.
Court’s Conservative Supermajority May Diminish Jackson’s Role
Given the court’s conservative supermajority, Kimberly West-Faulcon, a professor of constitutional law at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, argues that Jackson’s recusal will not have a huge impact.
She emphasized the “immense amount of power and discretion” possessed by the Supreme Court. Many conservative justices, during sometimes tense arguments in one of the term’s most watched issues, cited a 2003 ruling that allows the use of race in admissions but warned against indefinite use of similar programs.
The conservative justices on the court questioned how those who favored the race-conscious admissions plans planned to know whether they had succeeded. The issue of whether or not Harvard University’s race-conscious admissions strategy violates the Civil Rights Act is being considered by the court in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
Affirmative action is challenged in the case Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on the grounds that it violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
These 5 Words From Ketanji Brown Jackson Are a Master Class in How to Handle Put-Downs
This summer, when Justice Stephen Breyer inevitably retires, the Senate unanimously confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace him on the Supreme Court. Though she was nominated by a Democrat for president, three Republican senators voted for her because of how well she handled tough questions.
Jackson learned how to deal with criticism and adversity long before she ran for the Supreme Court or even became a lawyer or judge. She has taught others a valuable lesson that every leader should absorb.
She shared her experience of being the only Black woman in a room full of white men in a 2019 address at the University of Chicago Law School. Yet she was subjected to more than her fair share of criticism; for example, Jackson was advised against applying to Harvard by her high school counselor, who claimed she would be rejected.
(Like Michelle Obama, who was likewise warned against attending Princeton but chose to go there anyhow.) Hmm. Now I’ll really show them. As a Harvard undergraduate, she displayed this attitude in response to the display of a Confederate flag in a dorm room.
Black students at the university held marches and other forms of protest. Jackson participated as well, but she warned her fellow Black classmates to be careful. “Stop right there; if we keep like this, we’ll be tardy for all of our lessons.
We’re doing them a favor by battling this injustice, even though we know we’ll eventually lose “Those are the exact words that one of her classmates recalls her uttering. Mr. Elie Honig: Against Whom Republicans Will Have Much Difficulty Offering Opposition
Elie Honig: A Nominee Republicans Will be Hard-Pressed to Oppose
For the record, Kentaji Brown Jackson, the Honorable Judge (and soon-to-be Justice) Kentaji Brown Jackson, is the most qualified nominee you could hope to discover. She completed her undergraduate and legal education at the prestigious Harvard University.
She started her legal career as a clerk for a federal district court judge and then, in a beautiful bit of symmetry, landed a position with Justice Stephen Breyer, whom she may soon succeed.
Before her 2013 appointment to the federal district court, she practiced law and served for the US Sentencing Commission. Her nomination as a federal appellate judge last year received 53 votes, including those of three Republicans.
I’ve seen her work from the bench, and she left a lasting impression on me. She was well-informed, quick-witted, perceptive, and impartial during the trial I covered.
Conclusion
This historic nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson promises to end the erasure of Black women from our most sacred legal institutions, since she is an extremely competent public servant with remarkable experience as a federal judge.
She has a wealth of expertise in the courtroom, having litigated cases at every level of the federal court system and having served with distinction as a federal public defender.
She is well-known for her meticulous, deliberate approach to delivering justice on issues of reproductive rights, disability rights, and workers’ rights during her tenure as a district court judge, during which she issued rulings in more than five hundred fifty cases.
