Joe Biden Presidency thread *Please read OP - Threadbanned Users Added 4/5/21*

No it doesnt. It merely means that, like many other candidates to include the most recent appointee, Barrett, she gets best possible rating the ABA has to offer. It doesn’t imply that she is the best of all the candidates, even of all the black female candidates.

Biden was very upfront that he would select a black woman. That doesn’t mean that she won’t make a good Supreme Court judge, it does mean that she was only eligible for consideration because of her race and gender.

That’s not how it works. The question in the US is not whether or not she was a “diversity hire”, she very evidently is because the primary pre-requisite for consideration was race and gender, only secondly was the narrowing down by capability. The question of whether diversity hires are a good thing, however, is one which has adherents on both sides of the spectrum. Biden’s position, and that of many others, is that selection on the basis of diversity is a good thing in itself because increased diversity on the court (or corporate board, or university staff or whatever) is beneficial. He’s not attempting to deny it.

I have not mentioned Harris, except to say that as a San Francisco resident during her time as DA and later a Senator, I was not impressed by her and would not have voted for her.

On a personal level, I disagreed with a number of her policies varying from immigration enforcement to firearms, more so than most other Democrat candidates so by Primary time I had already resolved to go with another candidate even before she had dropped out. She would also crop up in local news a lot more than you would hear in the national news for smaller decisions or statements, which I can't recall specifically a decade and a half later but definitely left a 'taste'.

The more controversial issues which were a liability for her from people who were more inclined to agree with policies vary from her 'on again/off again' positions on things like police cameras, prisoner release or capitol punishment, questions like "Why did she refuse to prosecute Mnuchin's old company and happen to be the only donor recipient from Mnuchin" or her covering up malfeasance in the SF crime lab (over a thousand cases had to be dropped as a result), or when State AG, her office's acceptance of prosecutorial misconduct (eg Efrain and Baca both involving perjury by prosecutors). You will find a number of articles in various media if you do a search for something like 'Kamela harris controversial history' or the likes.

I have absolutely no idea. There are 178 other Federal Appeals Judges, before looking at other possibilities like State supreme courts such as Kruger's potential nomination, and I certainly don't know more than a dozen by name. Jackson may or may not be better than all 178 of them. However, at least 166 of those were eliminated from consideration before any discussion as to legal merit was entered into, or even consideration from lower courts (Is Childs, from the lower District level, also interviewed as a potential nominee, better than all 165+ ineligible Circuit Court judges? I think it unlikely). An attempt to argue that Jackson is or would be a better judge than any other is inherently unfounded on the information we appear to have.

Obviously Biden had other criteria in mind than just pure legal ability. Maybe he feels that having a more diverse makeup on the court will increase public faith in the court as an institution and that that will be a benefit which more than makes up for just being a 'good enough' judge instead of 'the absolute best.' Remember, part of the argument in the US is the argument between "Affirmative action is sociologically good" and the legal principle of "we are supposed to be color, religion and sex blind." Both positions have some merit, and arguments against also both have merit.

Bascially, and to his credit, Biden's position is "this is a diversity hire" and he's owning it.