“It’s a wonderful day, a joyful day, an inspiring day”, greeted the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Chuck Schumer. The US Senate proceeded, Thursday, April 7, to the historic confirmation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, of which she will be the first black magistrate. All elected members of the Democratic Party and three moderate Republican senators voted to bring this brilliant 51-year-old lawyer into the American temple of law.
Ketanji Brown Jackson will replace progressive magistrate Stephen Breyer, 83, who will retire at the end of June. Of the 115 justices who have served on the Supreme Court, 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 .
This magistrate was chosen at the end of February by Democratic President Joe Biden, 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 historic nature of this nomination, Kamala Harris, the first black woman to become vice-president of the United States, chaired the voting session.
A balance of power unfavorable to progressives
The confirmation, which Judge Jackson watched live from the White House alongside Joe Biden, was met with a standing ovation from Democrats in the chamber. Saluting a “historic day”the American president never ceased to praise the “extraordinary qualifications” of this graduate of Harvard University, who has experience in private and public and who was a lawyer and a federal judge.
This is the Democratic leader’s first appointment to the high court. However, it will not change the balance of power within the prestigious college of nine magistrates, 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. .
Before Mr. Biden, Donald Trump indeed had the opportunity to appoint three judges to the Supreme Court, anchoring the case in conservatism, possibly for several decades.
