Biden nominates Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, DePaul faculty reflect on diversity in law

President Joe Biden will nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, he announced Friday. Jackson, if confirmed, would make history as the first Black woman to serve as a justice.

“I am encouraged by President Biden’s announcement of Ketanji Brown Jackson as a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. More diversity on the court can only be a good thing, and she’ll provide excellence and perspective,” Jennifer L. Rosato Perea, dean in DePaul’s College of Law, said about the recent nomination.

Jackson graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Justice Stephen Breyer during the 1999-2000 Supreme Court term. From 2013 to 2021, she served as a United States District Judge for the District of Columbia and currently serves on the U.S. Supreme Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

From 2005 to 2007, Jackson served as a federal public defender in which she represented defendants on appeal who couldn’t afford a lawyer. If confirmed, she would be the first former public defender to serve on the Supreme Court.

Julie D. Lawton, a tenured professor in DePaul’s College of Law, said that it was important to increase diversity in the Supreme Court and that Jackson is “well qualified for the position.”

“[Jackson] has the benefit of a recent Senate confirmation hearing which, presumably, will make her upcoming hearing smoother,” Lawton told The DePaulia.

Lawton is a tenured professor at DePaul’s College of Law. She has been at DePaul for 11 years, is the co-director of the Business Law Clinic and is currently serving as the associate dean for experiential learning in the College of Law.

Lawton, in regard to Biden’s initiative to confirm a Black woman to the Court, emphasized the importance of diversity in “making sure that the law that we establish is reflective of all of us.”

In the Court’s 233-year-history, there have only been seven justices who have not been white men; Jackson would become the eighth.

Of the Court’s current justices, and the three women currently serving on the Court, only one — Sonia Sotomayor — is a woman of color.

“I think it’s important for our judiciary to reflect the diversity of our population. And so that’s not at all to suggest that there should be a quota system. That’s not the case at all,” Lawton said. “But we as African Americans have been in the country since almost its founding and the fact that we’ve never had a Black female on the Court, I think it’s telling.”

During a 2020 debate with Bernie Sanders, Biden made his original promise to select a Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

“I committed that, if I am elected president, and have the opportunity to elect someone to the Courts, I’ll appoint the first Black woman to the Court. It’s required that they have representation now, it’s long overdue,” Biden said.

Perea told The DePaulia that she is encouraged by Biden’s announcement to nominate Jackson to the Court.

“Although the nomination of a Black woman for a seat on the nation’s highest court is a positive step forward, we need to recognize that more representation and inclusion is needed throughout the pipeline to the legal profession, beginning with prospective law students and continuing throughout the top leadership positions on the courts, in the academy, law firms and corporations,” Perea said.

If Jackson were to be confirmed, it would be the first time that four women would be serving on the Supreme Court at the same time. Of the current women on the Court, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan have been more left-leaning and Justice Amy Coney Barrett has leaned right. Christina Rivers, a political science professor at DePaul, said that the mix of perspectives by the women on the Court will be beneficial for the judiciary.

“And I actually think it’s good with respect to women that you do have one woman on the Court who’s a conservative because, you know, African American women have suffered a particular role in this country that tends to be ignored,” Rivers said. “And they can understand sort of dual levels of discrimination both by race and by gender.”

Despite this added perspective of being a Black woman, Rivers added, she doesn’t believe that Jackson is “only going to look at the world through the eyes of an African-American woman because that’s not her job.”

“And even though not every minority group has the same particular issues or experiences, the fact that one can live one’s life as a person who can be considered inferior, both based on their race and on their sex is significant, I think it helps to have someone who has lived that experience,” Rivers said. “And right now, we don’t really have that person.”

The field of law continues to lack a level of diversity equivalent to the American population. According to a 2021 profile done by the American Bar Association, the legal profession is still overwhelmingly white. As of 2021, 85.4 percent of lawyers are white and 4.7 percent are Black. In comparison, as of 2019, 60 percent of the U.S. population is white and 13.4 percent is Black. In the past ten years, there has been a slight decline in the percentage of white lawyers (88 percent a decade ago), while the percentage of Black lawyers has remained nearly unchanged.

According to the same report, 37 percent of lawyers are women compared to 33 percent in 2011. The report doesn’t break down the gender demographics by race, but based on these numbers produced by the ABA, roughly 2 percent of lawyers are Black women.

Lawton says that the question of how to make the field of law more diverse is a complicated one because it’s a question of support and of resources.

“Becoming an attorney doesn’t start with, ‘Okay, I’m in college, I view myself as having all of these possibilities. How do I become an attorney?’ It starts much earlier than that,” Lawton said.

When students or their parents come to Lawton to ask for advice about getting into law school, Lawton tells them to pay for a professional Law School Admission Test (LSAT) prep course.

“And if you have the resources to pay for an LSAT prep class, or if your parents have the resources to pay for an LSAT prep class, then you are increasing your likelihood of scoring higher and thus are able to get into a good law school,” Lawton said. “That’s not a matter of intellect. That’s not even a matter of effort. That’s simply a matter of money.”

Though Lawton notes that current faculty at DePaul has fluctuated recently, both as a result of faculty members leaving DePaul and new hires being brought on, DePaul’s College of Law has very few Black full-time faculty. Currently, Lawton is the only Black female tenured faculty in the law school.

In a statement, Perea noted that diversity, equity and inclusion are long-standing core values of DePaul’s College of Law and are integral to their social justice mission. Recently, DePaul was named Best Law School for diversity of Black, Latino and Asian students, Perea added.

“We are constantly looking to increase the diversity of our faculty and staff to best meet the needs of our diverse student body,” Perea said.

Lawton added that DePaul has improved its level of diversity in both the student population and in the faculty.

“I think the university has created initiatives to recruit and retain faculty of color and certainly our student body has been quite vocal in their expectations for their professors, the diversity of the professors to reflect the diversity of the student body and we have heard that and we are certainly working to be responsive of that,” Lawton said.

In the field of law, Lawton said diversity is important because of how different backgrounds are treated differently under the law.

“Throughout history, we have seen that the law will treat different people of different races of different genders of different ethnicities and religions differently,” Lawton said.

When it comes to the law, diversity of all categories will make for a greater balance in which decisions are made.

“So I do think and, maybe it’s a hope, that the more diversity that we have, the more balanced we will be in the administration of the law,” Lawton added.