Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson - 22 March 2022

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is presently being reviewed by a committee of the U.S. Senate for a position on the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS).  There are many arguments coming up.  We can put aside the arguments from the people that want Yet Another White Man because they are so familiar and so expected.  The noisy protestations from Cruz, Hawley, Graham, and Blackburn (I think) fall along the expected lines based on racism and hot-button issues with little inherent meaning (CRT - Critical Race Theory), and so the argument that stands significant to me is the split along originalism and "lived experience".  

A repeated argument in favor of Judge Jackson is that she expands the SCOTUS to represent a broader slice of America.  She adds a point of view not already on the court, not in the history of the court.  Besides being the first black woman on SCOTUS, and besides being one of the few women on the SCOTUS, she is an experienced defense attorney.  She was a public defender, defending those arrested for crimes.  Further, she has defended some of those locked up in Guantanamo for crimes during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.  Most (perhaps even all) prior Justices on SCOTUS have had experience on the prosecuting side of cases rather than the defense side.  The Judge's experience broadening perspective of the Court is viewed as a Good Thing.  The Judge is expected to apply her "lived experience" as a defense lawyer to issues brought to the SCOTUS.

The originalists generally advocate a literal interpretation of the Constitution.  They feel that the words of the Constitution must carry the argument.  If the Constitution does not mention "privacy", then there can be no "right of privacy"; the Constitution states a "right to bear arms", so there is an impregnable right to "bear arms"; and so on.  This originalist model is either lazy or intellectually bankrupt.  It is lazy when one fails to take the words from 1789 and adapt them to nearly 250 years of change.  The 1789 document, itself, is a replacement for the Articles of Confederation that were barely two decades old, and the 1789 document, itself, spells out procedures to amend (change) the very document.  The originalist model is intellectually bankrupt because it denies the 27 amendments, it denies 250 years of change in the world, and because it binds us to a mind-reading exercise of a group of white men from 250 years ago.  White men who owned property, who owned slaves, who were only familiar with 18th Century technology, and white men who, themselves, were arguing that change is a necessary part of the human existence.  The famed original authors did not ever argue for stasis or stagnancy or they would never have started out on the revolutionary path that they followed.  The Jeffersons and Franklins of the 18th Century argue in favor of change and in favor of adapting to lived experience.

The reactionaries of today, generally the GOP Republicans, and the Federalist Society are arguing that our judicial system be run on the basis and mores of the 18th Century, and such an argument is bogus.

Let us proceed with all due haste to confirm Judge Jackson to the Supreme Court.