Ketanji Brown Jackson Is Already Proving To Be A More Legitimate Judge Than Clarence Thomas And Amy Coney Barrett

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(Photo by Kevin Lamarque-Pool/Getty Images)

Yesterday, the Court heard oral arguments for Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, one of two cases that will likely be the occasion to do away with affirmative action as we know it. As dreadful as that is, we all knew this was coming once the ideological commitments on the bench mathed out to 6-3. For a long time, the authority that vests the Court’s decisions with finality, legitimacy, was a fiction we all held dear.  Like the notion of due process, it was a noble lie that we depended on to keep sufficient trust in the system for it to grind on as scheduled. The real point worth noting is that Ketanji’s commitment to avoiding behavior that would suggest partiality is not as enthusiastically shared by her benchmates. From Jezebel:

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Conservative activist Ed Blum is challenging the race-conscious admission policies at the University of North Carolina and Harvard University via his group Students for Fair Admissions. Justice Jackson attended Harvard and served for six years on its board, and she will not participate in the argument about Harvard; the arguments were previously grouped together, but today the court is hearing them separately.

Meanwhile, Justice Thomas is married to MAGA nutcase Ginni Thomas—who said under oath to the January 6 Committee that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and badgered former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to overturn the election—and he has not recused himself from any cases about said election or insurrection. As of May 2022, he hasn’t recused from any cases involving his wife’s political activism, including opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

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Legitimacy — what the Court has previously defined as the general understanding among the American public, that when the Court issues an opinion, what it is doing is engaging in this principled analysis, as opposed to just exercising the individual views of the justices, is done a disservice when Supreme Court justices forgo the opportunity to sit out of conflicts where they have some (even apparent) skin in the game. Especially at a time when they are mired in other biased based controversies.

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Last week, Thomas raised eyebrows by temporarily blocking Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) from having to testify in front of a Georgia grand jury about President Donald Trump’s efforts to challenge that state’s election results. (Thomas is assigned to emergency appeals from the circuit court that oversees Georgia.) We’ll see how he votes when the full Supreme Court considers Graham’s appeal—it’s just wild that a man whose wife played an integral role in trying to overturn election results could be an integral player in legal proceedings around the same matter, which has far-reaching consequences for democracy.

Considering that Chief Justice Roberts finger wagged at other judiciaries about the importance of keeping your hands clean, you’d think the players on his Court would be stellar examples of modeling judicial behavior. When it comes to Ketanji, sure. Clarence? Not so much. Justice Barrett isn’t doing too hot either. It sure would be nice if there were some code of ethics Supreme Court justices had to abide by when their own moral compasses aren’t enough to make them do the right thing.

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Justice Jackson Recused Herself From a Supreme Court Case. Your Move, Clarence Thomas! [Jezebel]

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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Affirmative Action, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, Courts, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Recusal, Supreme Court