Joe Biden has made it official: He announced this afternoon that he is nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson, a federal judge and former law clerk to Stephen Breyer, to replace Breyer on the Supreme Court. Replacing a justice with one of his own former clerks is becoming a bit of a pattern, as Brett Kavanaugh was a former clerk for Anthony Kennedy. Jackson has spent a decade as a federal district judge and was confirmed last year to the D.C. Circuit, although she has barely been there long enough to have much of a record as a federal appellate judge. In addition to being the first African-American woman on the Court, she will be the first former federal public defender on the Court.
Aside from Biden’s pledge to appoint a black woman, which took roughly 97 percent of the possible contenders off the board right away just for their race and gender, it seems clear that a few factors helped elevate Jackson over the other two main contenders, Leondra Kruger of the California supreme court and South Carolina federal district judge Michelle Childs:
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