In her short time on the federal appeals court, Judge Jackson has yet to produce a body of opinions that express a legal philosophy. But her previous rulings as a Washington district judge were seen as liberal.
Her most notable decisions in court have included blocking attempts by the Trump administration to accelerate deportations, cutting subsidies to prevent teen pregnancy and foreclosure on a former White House counsel from running for Congress. testify to President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to obstruct the investigation into Russia. †
“Presidents are not kings,” she wrote in 2019, issuing a ruling that former White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II was required to comply with a congressional subpoena to testify about Mr Trump’s actions. “They have no subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose fate they may control.”
As Mr. Biden weighed his options against a short list of other candidates, Judge Jackson emerged as a frontrunner among advisers who saw her as a natural choice, in part because she had already gained Republican support for her appeals court confirmation. Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, whose own nomination to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama in 2016 was thwarted by Republicans, was previously chief justice of the appeals court and it was his decision to leave the bench to Biden’s cabinet that opened the seat that Judge Jackson filled.
The president’s decision to take her to the appeals court was seen as a signal that if given the chance to name a candidate, she would be at the top or near the top of his list to deliver on his campaign promise. to be fulfilled during the Democratic primary. a black woman in court. Her background as a public defender also made her an unusual but attractive choice for Mr. Biden.
“The law is not something esoteric to Joe Biden,” said Jeff Peck, a lobbyist who served as the general counsel and staff director of the Senate Judiciary Committee when Mr. Biden was its chairman. “He wants to make sure there is a judge who understands how the law affects people in their daily lives.”
When a Republican senator asked during the confirmation process last year if she feared her work as a defense attorney would put violent criminals back on the street, she argued that having such a background was a plus.