Justice: Irin Carmon

The Other First What it means to nominate a veteran public defender.

TO THE LIST of obvious firsts, a Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would add another: the first former public defender to sit on the Supreme Court. It’s an entry on her résumé that a few years ago might have been politically unthinkable for a nominee to the highest court but is now, thanks to years of work by the progressive legal movement and criminal-justice reformers, a boon.

Jackson served as a public defender for only two and a half years, but that’s more experience than any previous justice— ironic given that the Court in 1963 declared that “lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries,” requiring states to provide attorneys to those who can’t afford them.

From her longer stints at the U.S. Sentencing Commission all the way back to her Harvard undergraduate thesis (“‘The Hand of Oppression’: Plea Bargaining Processes and the Coercion of Criminal Defendants”) and her subsequent Harvard Law Review article (“Prevention Versus Punishment: Toward a Principled Distinction in the Restraint of Released Sex Offenders”), Jackson has shown a deep interest in trying to ensure fair process for unpopular clients. In a nice bit of continuity, Jackson clerked for Stephen Breyer, whom she would replace. But her confirmation could be a break from the man who repeatedly voted on the side of law enforcement rather than individual rights.