After four days of hearings, 40 hours of testimony—and more than 230 years—we have finally witnessed what it takes for a Black woman to gain admission into the Supreme Court.
Under intense and unforgiving scrutiny, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was a model of restraint, discernment and excellence. She was sharp enough to be understood, and subtle enough to avoid answering inappropriate questions. She was insightful enough to illuminate the complexities of the law and opaque enough to avoid being forced into a box. Nimble but steady, tough yet flexible, unfailingly polite though never a pushover, Jackson gave one of the best performances under some of the most brutal circumstances in modern political history. All this she did while carrying the burden, and the honor, of being the first Black woman to ascend to the highest court in the nation—despite the fact that Black people were present in the country well before it existed.
And yet, it was not enough.
The Republican Senate and the party writ large remain unconvinced. Having pried at every crevice and hammered at every opening to test Jackson in ways that strained the boundaries of both credulity and good taste, many GOP senators have somehow found her wanting. Mitch McConnell thinks she’s liked by the wrong people. John Thune doesn’t see anything in her to change minds. And potential swing vote, retiring Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, isn’t happy with her restrained perspective on court packing—despite her offering the same answer as Amy Coney Barrett did in confirmation hearings held barely 18 months ago.
In every nitpick and critique offered, Jackson was measured not by her accomplishments, but by her deficiencies. It is a familiar position for many Black women, who are judged for everything from our tone of voice to the hair on our heads, as we are evaluated against an impossible standard. We are perpetually either too much or not enough, forced to navigate ever-shifting criteria for what it means to be great, while watching as others, often with fewer accomplishments and greater shortcomings, move ahead without ever having to prove a thing. The only difference between the pressures Black women face in professional settings daily, and the attacks endured by Jackson during her confirmation hearings, is that her ordeal was televised.
We saw her treated with withering contempt for the smallest discrepancies, badgered for circumstances that she had nothing to do with, forced again and again to provide the same answers with the same context while having her reputation maligned for maintaining the norms of her profession. We watched as the very same senators who supported a man accused of sexual misconduct no fewer than two dozen times, condemned her for leniency in sentencing in cases of sexual abuse. We saw the hypocrisy and duplicity, the motivated reasoning and the leading arguments, the questions clumsily laid as traps and the fabrication of smears happen in real time, with a woman of clear mind and sound qualifications set as the target. And finally, it made clear the absurdity of merit.
Here were men who would determine whether Jackson could meet the standards of prudence, engagement, perspicacity and experience to sit on the high bench, and they could hardly conduct themselves with the dignity of toddlers.
Ted Cruz spent an alarming amount of his time asking one of the most accomplished jurists to ever be nominated for the court about whether she thought babies could be racist. In a take that violates the entire notion of reading comprehension, John Cornyn suggested that Jackson, in her constitutionally-mandated role as a federal public defender, had accused George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld of being war criminals. Lindsey Graham hurtled attacks and allegations at Jackson’s character with such a frenzied intensity that she often had no time or space to respond, while using his platform to complain, at length, about the treatment faced by now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was credibly accused of sexual assault during his confirmation hearings.
It was a comparison that, despite Graham’s best efforts, only made Jackson look good, as the conduct of both Graham and the man he defended would have instantly disqualified Jackson from the court. In response to serious allegations of misconduct, Kavanaugh screamed at inquiring senators, broke down into tears, and gave petulant, vindictive responses to important questions about his character and fitness for the bench. Rather than crafting a judicial methodology like Jackson, Kavanaugh was an open partisan, performing legal work for the Starr Report and the Bush team in Bush v. Gore. And rather than demur or clarify context on difficult situations like Jackson did, Kavanaugh, during his hearings, misrepresented himself, at best, and possibly committed perjury, at worst. Still, every Republican currently in the Senate voted to confirm him.
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With constitutionally-mandated vagueness, standards for the Supreme Court have always been, more or less, a matter of opinion. While all Supreme Court justices must be trained in the law, not all currently in the highest court are lawyers; some have had judicial experience, and others have had none at all. Some have worked entirely in private practice while others were wholly dedicated to public service, and a not-insignificant number are former elected officials. The consent of the Senate is, therefore, at the discretion of individual senators, and their requirements for the post can be as lax or as stringent as they desire. So, the least we can ask, as spectators and voters, is that they be consistent, but instead, Republicans have shifted the goalposts to an impossible degree, casting aside the talents, accomplishments and integrity of a talented judge to make a point about who is granted the permission of flaws.
This is the open double standard we tolerate. These senators—these critics—can decry sexual abuse and stonewall legislation to protect those likely to be victimized; they can condemn the defense of torture victims and insist that they alone love the Constitution; they can say that they are in opposition to the candidacy of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court even at the same time they are preparing statements in defense of the wildly unethical workings of Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, in an act of logical gymnastics that is so astounding it could make Simone Biles gasp. And this is all because we have indulged the myth that they are born to have the world and the rest of us have to earn it.
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What Jackson demonstrated so ably this week is that excellence isn’t what you look like or what you were born into, it’s your actions and the way you respond to the world. It is perseverance in a hostile society; it is integrity and dignity when the system tries to strip you of both; it is believing in yourself when the world is ready to throw you away, and in so doing, leave a legacy no one can deny. Excellence is the determination and endurance at the core of twice as hard, half as much, backwards, and in high heels. It is the inheritance of Black womanhood that Jackson demonstrated under unprecedented circumstances.
Amidst the hypocrisy and self-delusion, her merit and worthiness were finally admired, elevated and recognized by the thousands watching, and reflected in the shining pride on her daughter’s face—a reminder that despite anything, we can endure.
During her week of questioning, Jackson never lost her temper nor buckled under the strain. She was gracious and strong enough for the vitriol she faced. But honestly, she shouldn’t have had to be, because no matter how she is judged or by whom, she has always been worthy.
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Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and the Presumption of Merit
Source: Filipino Journal Articles
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