Ketanji Brown Jackson Not a Constitutional Originalist

Political life — like the rest of life — would be a lot simpler if people would just tell the truth.

If I thought for a minute that Ketanji Brown Jackson meant what she said in her confirmation hearings — in which she described the judge’s relationship to the law in approximately the same way Antonin Scalia would have — then I’d be perfectly happy to see her on the Supreme Court. If I believed for one minute that she would subordinate her own political preferences to what the law actually says, then I wouldn’t care if she’d been on the board of Planned Parenthood or Mike Bloomberg’s dopey anti-gun group, because — here’s the critical thing — it wouldn’t matter. Not to her performance as a judge, anyway. While there will always be good-faith disagreements, a Marxist who is a committed textualist (if we can imagine such a thing) and a right-winger who is a committed textualist should, in theory, mostly come to the same or similar conclusions.

About the Author

Kevin D. Williamson

Kevin D. Williamson is a former fellow at National Review Institute and a former roving correspondent for National Review.

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Ketanji Brown Jackson

Political life — like the rest of life — would be a lot simpler if people would just tell the truth.

If I thought for a minute that Ketanji Brown Jackson meant what she said in her confirmation hearings — in which she described the judge’s relationship to the law in approximately the same way Antonin Scalia would have — then I’d be perfectly happy to see her on the Supreme Court. If I believed for one minute that she would subordinate her own political preferences to what the law actually says, then I wouldn’t care if she’d been on the board of Planned Parenthood or Mike Bloomberg’s dopey anti-gun group, because — here’s the critical thing — it wouldn’t matter. Not to her performance as a judge, anyway. While there will always be good-faith disagreements, a Marxist who is a committed textualist (if we can imagine such a thing) and a right-winger who is a committed textualist should, in theory, mostly come to the same or similar conclusions.