Nancy Solomon: You're listening to The Takeaway. I'm Nancy Solomon in for Tanzina. Last week, President Joe Biden announced 11 nominees to the federal courts as part of his effort to reshape the judicial branch after four years of Donald Trump. His first slate of nominees is notably diverse in terms of race, gender and legal background. They include three Black women for vacancies on the appeals court and the first Muslim-American on the district court. But to put his mark on the judicial system, President Biden has a long way to go to come anywhere near the 200-plus judges that were confirmed under former President Trump. For more on this, we're joined by Jen Bendery, senior politics reporter for HuffPost. Jen, welcome back to the show.
Jen Bendery: Thank you for having me.
Nancy: Tell us about some of these people that Joe Biden is nominating.
Jen: Joe Biden has announced 11 judicial nominees. It's very exciting for people who follow this because there's been a lot of anticipation on who he's going to put forward. Of those, 10 of them would be federal judges once confirmed and one of them is a nominee for superior court in D.C. In terms of diversity, it's a pretty incredible mix. We've got a lot of historic numbers in here, as you mentioned. There are three African-American women who have been nominated to appeals court seats.
For a little context on why that's a big deal, to date, only eight African-American women have ever served as appeals court judges in the history of this country. With Biden announcing three African-American women as appeals court nominees, that is already shaking the foundation of what our courts could look like. Three African-American women, if they are confirmed to appeals courts, that would be the same number of African-American women judges who have ever been confirmed in a single presidential administration. He's off to a very impressive start in terms of diversity.
Nancy: One of those judges is Ketanji Brown Jackson, who will succeed Merrick Garland on the appeals court. How significant is her appointment?
Jen: There's a lot of buzz about judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Not only would she be one of those three African-American women to be confirmed to an appeals court seat, but there's a lot of attention on her being potentially Biden's next Supreme Court nominee. Part of the reason for that is that President Biden has already said that he will nominate an African-American woman as his first Supreme Court nominee. He has made that vow.
Secondly, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who's currently a district court judge, she is nominated to a seat on the D.C. circuit court of appeals, and that court in particular is kind of known as a holding pattern for potential Supreme Court nominees. There's a number of our current Supreme Court justices who were on that court first. There's a whole bunch of buzz around her nomination in Washington right now because she fits. She looks like she's on that track to potentially be our next Supreme Court nominee.
Nancy: Tell us a little bit about her and how she got there.
Jen: She's been on the D.C. district court since 2013. Before that, she was a vice chair of the US Sentencing Commission. She's got a pretty mixed up interesting background. She was a law clerk for a judge before that on a district court in Massachusetts. She was also a law clerk for a judge on a US appeals court in the ‘90s. She was also an associate for a law firm. She's got a very rich background.
She also clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer back in 1999 to 2000. She's been all over the board. Again, she would be a historic nominee, not just because she would be an African-American woman on an appeals court, but if she were put forward for the Supreme Court, obviously we've never had an African-American woman on that court.
Nancy: This drive to diversify the federal bench. We're seeing an effort across the board or at least a conversation in all walks of life in the country about diversity. It seems to me that judges, because of their role in the criminal justice system, and because the criminal justice system is really one of the harshest and most troubling places where the legacy of racism in this country has such a huge impact. Do you think that we're going to see real change in the criminal justice system by bringing in more Black judges onto the bench?
Jen: What's really fascinating about where I think Biden is going with his judicial nominees is not just that he's interested in diversifying things like the race and the gender of the nominees he's going to put forward, but this idea of professional diversity. This idea that we don't just look at demographics for diversity in judges. We want to know what their backgrounds were. We don't just want corporate lawyers and prosecutors to become federal judges. What about public defenders? They're totally qualified to become federal judges. What about civil rights attorneys? What about people who don't work at huge law firms, just being the default for becoming a federal judge?
That's what's going to be really interesting, I think, with Biden's picks because he's making that case already. This idea that the courts are supposed to reflect the people that they serve. If you have judges who have been public defenders or civil rights attorneys, these are people who are more familiar with the legal needs of everyday Americans who may be living on lower incomes or otherwise marginalized. When you have a slate of Harvard-educated white male judges who all worked at corporations, or were prosecutors deciding cases that are involving people who have absolutely no connection to their frame of reference from their own experiences, that's a problem.
I think Biden, who himself, he was a public defender back in the day, so he understands personally the importance of mixing up the backgrounds of the people we're putting on the courts, because it just brings this thing full circle in terms of having our courts reflect the people they serve.
Nancy: It's surprising that this hasn't happened before. Is that what you're saying? The example you gave of public defenders. Has there not been a push to put public defenders, raise them up onto the bench?
Jen: Progressive groups have been calling for this for years. There's certainly people who have said, "We need to diversify the federal bench in terms of professions." Let's go back a little bit chronologically. If you look at Trump's judicial nominees, they were almost entirely white male, former corporate lawyers and prosecutors, kind of like the standard mold of what this country has used to pick people to be federal judges. That was four years of Trump. Now under Obama, he was much more focused on diversity of his judicial nominees, but he was more focused on things like demographics, race, gender, sexuality, those kinds of things. He put forward a number of historic judicial nominees on those fronts.
But when we come back to this idea of professional diversity, even Obama did not make a big push on that, and it appears the moment has arrived. We have a former public defender in the White House. We have progressive groups loudly pushing this idea that we need professional diversity here. You've got senators like Elizabeth Warren, who have been talking about this for years, when most other senators do not make this a priority when they talk about the kinds of judges that they want to fill the seats in their states.
Nancy: Do we have any sense at this point of what kind of obstacles these nominees are going to face as they get to the 50-50 Senate?
Jen: Of course. If past is precedent, at least some Republicans are going to try to oppose most of Biden's judicial nominees for the sole reason that they are Joe Biden's nominees. That is what happened under President Obama. For years, there was unprecedented obstruction of his judicial nominees for the sole purpose that they were just Obama's nominees.
The stories you might hear of how partisan and gridlocked D.C. can get and Congress and the White House and these things, when it comes to judicial nominees, that is right in the center of it all. Republicans typically don't want to support-- They will not often want to support, particularly an appeals court nominee, from a president of a different party right now.
That said, district court nominees often are recommended directly by a senator to the White House, so you're going to see more support for district nominees that Biden puts forward, but for the appeals court nominees, I suspect Republicans are probably going to make a stink about many of them. They'll probably call them too progressive, too liberal. We've got to watch this play out though. You can't just unilaterally say no to all judges because people need judges in their states. Even if you are in a deep red state, you still need judges to fill your courts because these courts are overworked.
Nancy: Of course, there were the three openings on the Supreme Court that Trump was able to fill. What's the likelihood of President Biden being able to fill a SCOTUS seat during his term?
Jen: I get this question a lot, and it makes me laugh because I feel like there's a lot of speculation about who will Biden put on the Supreme Court? When are we going to see his nominee? How's he going to mix it up? Who is his African-American woman choice going to be? The reality is somebody has to die on the court or somebody has to retire right now. For the moment, nobody has died and nobody is saying they're going to retire. That's about as basic as it gets.
I saw that White House press secretary Jen Psaki was recently asked this very question and her response was, "There are no vacancies on the Supreme Court to fill, so we don't have a nominee right now." That's really where the rubber hits the road with Supreme Court speculation. However, of course there are conversations that may be happening behind the scenes. Is President Biden talking to Justice Breyer about retiring? I don't know, but my sense is that for the moment, while all eyes are always on the Supreme Court, right now President Biden is very focused on moving quickly on putting up nominees to fill all these other vacancies on the appeals court level and on the district court level.
Nancy: Jen Bendery is a senior politics reporter for HuffPost. Jen, thanks for joining us.
Jen: Anytime.
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