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Ketanji Brown Jackson
Photo: TOM WILLIAMS / AFP
According to reports from the US media, Joe Biden has decided on the successor to the liberal constitutional judge Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court: The US President will therefore propose federal judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The 51-year-old would become the first African-American woman to serve on the US Supreme Court if the Senate accepts Biden's proposal (read more here).
Breyer, 83, recently announced that he would be stepping down from his post in the summer.
Biden was thus able to appoint a new constitutional judge for the first time during his tenure.
During the election campaign, the Democrat had promised to appoint an African-American woman to the powerful Supreme Court.
In the past few weeks, Biden then tested several candidates.
The choice now fell on Jackson, who is currently working at the federal appeals court in the capital Washington.
Brown Jackson, a Harvard graduate and former Public Defender, once worked as a secretary for Breyer.
She was also on then-President Barack Obama's shortlist for the Supreme Court.
This will not change anything in terms of the majority on the Supreme Court: Six of the nine constitutional judges belong to the conservative camp.
The Supreme Court has had only five women judges and two black judges in its 232-year history.
Since 1968, the Democrats have only been able to push through four nominations - and the Republicans 16. Most recently, the Republicans blocked Obama's candidate Merrick Garland and were lucky that the liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not resign early like Breyer, so that Donald Trump after her death replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett, her ideological opposite.
In the US, constitutional judges are nominated by the President and must then be confirmed by the Senate.
The appointment is for life.
The Supreme Court decides on the constitutionality of laws and government actions and generally has the final say in legal disputes.
This includes highly contentious issues such as abortion rights, gun laws, immigration laws and the death penalty.
as /AFP