WELCOME TO NORTH CAROLINA, MADAM JUSTICE!
by Cash Michaels
One of the many blessings of the Biden Administration we got before being stuck in the fascist sinkhole we’re currently in, was a brilliant young black woman who made history when President Biden appointed her to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022.
Her name is Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Justice Jackson, 54, is currently one of three so-called “liberal” justices on the highest court in our land, and in recent years, has become probably the most outspoken in her legal opinions dissenting from the six-member conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
Justice Jackson has proven herself to be bold and outspoken, yet displaying a fine legal acumen, and intuitive awareness of the important implications each decision from the court has on the average American.
So why am I bringing Justice Jackson up here, and now?
Because next Wednesday, September 3rd at 6 p.m. in the Harrison Auditorium on the campus of the largest historically black university in the nation, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, Justice Jackson will be speaking as part of her book tour promoting her #1 New York Times bestseller titled,“Lovely One.”
For the record, “Lovely One” is the translation of the West African name her aunt gave her at birth, “Ketanji.”
The book is a memoir about Justice Jackson’s life growing up in Miami, Florida; being influenced by her parents (her father, Johnny Brown, graduated from North Carolina Central University in Durham earning his bachelor’s degree in history); attending and graduating from Harvard University and Harvard Law; and then earning her way up the legal ranks, becoming an assistant federal public defender; then an Assistant Special Counsel at the Sentencing Commission; later nominated by Pres. Barack Obama and confirmed to be a U.S District Court judge in the District of Columbia; and finally, reaching the pinnacle of her profession when chosen by Pres. Joe Biden and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, 53-47 to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court as an Associate Justice, making history.
"We've taken another step toward making our highest court reflect the diversity of America," Biden once wrote. "She will be an incredible Justice, and I was honored to share this moment with her."
Justice Jackson is expected to share her life story only with N.C. A&T State University students, faculty and staff during her speech (her audience is understandably restricted), and I’m glad she will, because the students there, in particular, need to hear from this impressive young woman of history firsthand so that they can individually examine their personal life trajectories, and gain inspiration from this extraordinary legal leader.
Like so many other academically and experientially talented and gifted young black professionals Donald “I am not a dictator” Trump is trying to wipe off the face of this planet, Justice Jackson was ready when the call came for greatness.
Politically in part, yes, she got the job as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court because she is black, but that wasn’t the only reason, as her new book will undoubtedly document and prove.
Ketanji Brown Jackson also got the position because long before she was born, no one white and in power ever considered making sure that a qualified black woman served on the highest court of this land in its over 230 year history, representing a part of America deserving a voice in how laws that affect everyone are decided and enforced.
I’m not knocking Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black man to ever serve on the high court in 1967, but his choice is no excuse for there not also being a black woman at least nominated long before just three years ago. Same goes for Marshall's successor, Justice Clarence Thomas, who joined the court in 1991.
So it took over 230 years for a qualified black female jurist to make it onto the nation’s highest bench, and history chose Ketanji Brown Jackson, not New York City Judge Jane Matilda Bolin (appointed by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in 1939 and the first African-American judge ever in United States history), or the legendary U.S. District Court Judge Constance Baker Motley (appointed to the federal bench in 1966, clerked for Justice Marshall, and was the first African-American female attorney to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court), or any of the other brilliant black female legal practitioners who were insidiously not allowed to successfully rise to the level of U.S. Supreme Court associate justice before now.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, NYC Judge Bolin, federal Judge Motley, our very own former NC Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley and many other unknown but brilliant, experienced and qualified black women judges across our country, are one of the reasons why we have DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policies, or at least what’s left of them.
It makes me shudder to think of all of the tremendous, qualified talent of all colors, ethnicities and genders we’re now losing because, as a country, we no longer respect the tremendous power DEI gave us in private industry and government.
I commend Justice Jackson for choosing NC A&T State University and its students for her visit, and to share her unique story and message with. The students there are learned and accomplished, and they deserve to be recognized for their achievements in the fields of agricultural and scientific research, though Lord only knows the Trump Administration will pull the fiscal rug out from under them as fast as you can say “letter from the government,” spuriously claiming that the tens of millions of federal dollars NC A &T gets for all of that research is wasted because the university is practicing “vile racism” by being a predominately black school.
Wait, watch and see. It’s coming.
And that’s another reason why Justice Jackson’s visit there Sept. 3rd is so vitally important. She has a front row seat to witness her conservative majority colleagues on the high court literally change the rules of the road, effectively backing the Trump Administration as it grabs more and more power for the executive branch, all the while corrupting the legislative, and ignoring the lower judicial branches except when it suits its purposes.
Most importantly, Justice Jackson, in her powerful dissents representing the “liberal” minority on the court, is boldly speaking out against what she’s seeing, and making clear in the process that members of the conservative majority - three of whom are Trump appointed - are accomplices to the dangers and damage caused by a runaway president who has every intention to choke the life out of democracy as we know it.
She’s already seen that damage and danger firsthand when Trump’s angry mob of white supremacists tried to take the U.S. Capitol by force and overthrow the federal government on January 6th, 2021. Justice Jackson came on the court with her eyes already open to what the American people would have to deal with.
Even before ever being nominated to the Supreme Court, then U.S. District Court Judge Jackson definitely got on Trump’s bad side when she ruled against him in a 2019 decision mandating that his former White House Counsel Don McGann cooperate with Congress during its impeachment proceedings against the president.
Jackson issued a 118-page ruling stating, “presidents are not kings” and “no one is above the law.”
When White House attorneys balked and argued that Judge Jackson didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, and that her order “…contradicts longstanding legal precedent established by administrations of both parties,” Jackson astutely countered, "Absolute testimonial immunity for senior-level White House aides appears to be a fiction that has been fastidiously maintained over time through the force of sheer repetition.”
In other words, just because you’ve always done it wrong, fellas, and gotten away with it, doesn’t make it legal or right now!
Three years later, Judge Jackson is on the U.S. Supreme Court. Wanna explain to me again how the only reason why Biden chose her to serve on there was because she’s black?
And that’s not the last time Justice Jackson has stuck Trump’s nose in it.
When lower federal courts disallowed the Trump Administration from terminating $783 million in federal National Health Institute grants for scientific and medical research recently, and the Supreme Court’s conservative majority reversed them, that reversal came with a warning, reports CNN:
“Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” Justice Neil Gorsuch admonished in an opinion for the right-wing majority last week when deciding to allow Trump to cancel the in research grants.
But Justice Jackson caught Gorsuch doing Trump’s dirty work, and issued a fiery dissent charging, "The Court also lobs this grenade without evaluating Congress’ intent or the profound legal and practical consequences of this ruling," further noting that “…potentially life-saving scientific advancements [are] on the line.”
Jackson added, “The forward march of scientific discovery will not only be halted — it will be reversed. That’s what happens when you make up the rules as you go to help your side win.”
Stopping scientific discovery, however, is the least of the Trump Administration’s extraordinary attempts to make the federal judiciary bow and heel to its whims.
On Tuesday, a federal judge from Virginia had to throw out DOJ’s inexplicable lawsuit against all 15 federal judges in Maryland. The chief judge there had “stopped the immediate deportation of migrants [and] challenged their removals,” and DOJ didn't like it, reported The Associated Press. The Justice Dept, which will appeal, countered that no judge has the right to “impede the president’s authority to enforce immigration laws,” and decided to sue.
That Virginia U.S. District Court judge, Thomas Cullen, not only stopped DOJ’s ridiculous and spiteful lawsuit, but “criticized the administration’s attacks on the judiciary, highlighting in a footnote that White House officials in recent months had described judges as “rogue,” “unhinged” and “crooked,” among other epithets.”
Get this - Judge Cullen was nominated by Trump to the federal bench!
So Madam Justice isn’t the only federal jurist peeping what Trump and his gang are up to when it comes to trying to diminish the power of the judiciary over him.
In July, during a personal appearance hosted by the Indianapolis Bar Association, when asked by the moderator, “What keeps you up at night?”Justice Jackson replied, “I would say the state of our democracy.”
She added that she was “…really very interested in getting people to focus …and to pay attention to what is happening in our country and in our government.”
Amen, Madam Justice!
More from CNN:
“Perhaps the degradation of our rule-of-law regime would happen anyway,” Jackson wrote in her June 27 dissent in the case related to Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship. “But this court’s complicity in the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts, their rulings, and the law (as they interpret it) will surely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise.”
Earlier, in April, in another strong dissent, Jackson invoked the court’s notorious 1944 case of Korematsu v. United States, when the justices upheld the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Jackson derided the current court majority’s decision to let the administration use the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador. The majority had acted swiftly on the administration’s appeal in the controversy over the 1798 wartime law, issuing an unsigned, brief four-page opinion.
“At least when the Court went off base in the past,” Jackson wrote, “it left a record so posterity could see how wrong it went.” In the controversy at hand, Jackson noted, the court decided the matter without the usual briefing or public arguments, leaving, as she wrote, “less and less of a trace. But make no mistake: We are just as wrong now as we have been in the past, with similarly devastating consequences. It just seems we are now less willing to face it.”
Fellow dissenters in the Alien Enemies Act case declined to join her words.
And when it came to the conservative majority’s June, 2023 decision outlawing affirmative action in college admissions. Justice Jackson did not spare the rod:
“The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism. But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain.”
“Gulf-sized race-based gaps exist with respect to the health, wealth and well-being of American citizens. They were created in the distant past, but have indisputably been passed down to the present day through generations. Every moment these gaps persist is a moment in which this great country falls short of actualizing one of its founding principles - the “self-evident” truth that all of us are created equal. Yet, today, the Court determines that holistic admissions programs like the one that the University of North Carolina (UNC) has operated…consistent with [settled law], are a problem with respect to achievement of that aspiration, rather than a viable solution (as has long been evident to historians, sociologists and policymakers alike).”
I’m sorry that the allotted space here will not allow me to reprint Justice Jackson’s entire brilliant dissenting opinion on the conservative majority’s outlawing of affirmative action, but I’m just glad she’s on the U.S. Supreme Court where she belongs, serving us all.
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, welcome to North Carolina! In the slight chance that you see this commentary, I bring you heartfelt greetings from all of us who, like you, lament the slow and deliberate destruction of our democracy, and truly cherish our constitutional right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of justice and happiness.
As you once said, “the president is NOT king” and “no one is above the law.”
Amen, my "sista," amen!
Welcome to North Carolina, Madam Justice!
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