The DC Supreme Court Commission of a New Justice and Biden’s confirmation to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, Democratic nominees to the bench, and a Republican Republican an attorney general

The Supreme Court, a place bound by tradition and formality, will hold one of its most scripted rituals on Friday for a justice whose appointment broke the mold of history.

The first black woman to be confirmed to a circuit court judgeship was the one that Biden had an opportunity to put his stamp on, and the 11 Black women confirmed are three more than all of his predecessors combined.

The presidential commission will begin with the reading of ‘know ye’ and introduce special trust and confidence in thewisdom, uprightness and learning of Ketanji Brown Jackson.’

The judge is expected to preside over the special sitting. He will be watching from one of the seats in the front of the room. Jackson wore the black robe for the US District Court in DC before she went to the high court, and her colleagues from the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit are expected as well.

“We’ve confirmed 74 women as federal judges during this administration so far,” Herwig said. “That’s actually more than were confirmed during the four years of President Trump’s term or during the eight years of President George W. Bush’s administration.” Dana Douglas is the first person of color ever to serve on the 5th Circuit appeals court and the first person of color ever to serve on the 7th Circuit appeals court. Biden nominated and secured confirmation for 11 Black women to sit on the appeals courts, more than all other presidents combined.

The Commission of a New Justice was instituted by Warren Burger when he was still the Chief Justice, and took place at a special sitting of the court.

Burger started to use the Marshall chair which has a black seat and is decorated with brass nail trim. The new justice sits in the chair before being escorted to the bench to take the oath.

Friday’s investiture, which will be the first for a Democratic appointee in 12 years, is also likely to bring out people such as Jackson, a progressive of the law. Earlier such events for GOP appointees saw the Republican old guard hobnobbing in the courtroom before the event. The reception will be held at the court. A crowd of well-wishers gather outside. Occasionally it is protesters.

There have been glitch in the carefully arranged investitures. The attorney general usually stands at the lectern to present the commission, which has been previously signed by the president.

In November 2018, one day before the formal investiture for Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, for wholly unrelated reasons. Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker then undertook the duty of referring the parchment commission to the court.

Justice Ginsburg’s black leather chair at the bench was empty, an omission that still casts a shadow over the ceremony. She fractured her ribs when she fell. Doctors discovered her lung cancer after she was hospitalized for the injury. Ginsburg died in September 2020.

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She has friends and mentors on her list, among them are US District Court Judges Pat Saris of Massachusetts and Landya McCafferty of New Hampshire.

The new justice’s husband, a surgeon, will be in the courtroom with their two daughters. Jackson grew up in the Miami area, and her parents who still live in Florida, Johnny and Ellery Brown, are scheduled to attend the ceremony.

The first justice to be seated, for investiture purposes, in the chair of Chief Justice Marshall (who served 1801-1835) was Lewis Powell in January 1972. He was immediately followed by William Rehnquist, sworn in on the same day as an associated justice. (Rehnquist became chief justice in 1986.)

The other four appointees were Richard Nixon, including Powell and Rehnquist. The New York Times reported that a picketer walked outside of the investiture with a sign that said America mourns the death of an institution.

Whether or not universities may continue to use race as a factor in campus diversity is among the issues that are on the calendar.

Roberts will administer the judicial oath after the commission is read, during which a new justice will swear to uphold the law and do equal right to the poor and rich.

When Burger and O’Connor arrived at the Supreme Court in 1981, the chief justice asked the photographers if they had ever seen him with a better-looking justice.

Throughout the legislative battles of President Joe Biden’s first two years in office, one Democratic priority served as a clear if quiet measure of methodical, consistent accomplishment: the pipeline of judicial confirmations to the federal bench.

In the final days of the 116th Congress, the amount of effort and success is laid bare by the total number of confirmed judges and the makeup of the selections themselves.

The White House data shows 97 Article III judges were confirmed by Biden and Senate Democrats over the last two years, including a Supreme Court justice.

As Democrats look to expand their majority in Congress in the next two years, there are no signs that the pace is going to slow.

McConnell was the leader of the Senate when Trump was elected and his success elevated the issue of the balance of the Supreme Court to the forefront among Democrats.

There are some limits to the extent in which Biden can match what Trump did with his four years, because of the vacancies that occur on the courts and the amount of time that will be spent on it. Even though officials promise to ramp up their efforts in the next two years, the scale of the effort led by McConnell resulted in fewer opportunities for Biden, even though he would often repeated a personal slogan of “no vacancies left behind.”

Biden’s senior team and counsel’s office tightly coordinated with their Senate counterparts throughout first two years to prioritize the efforts. Staff on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue closely monitored effort month after month, even though it rarely grabbed the attention of major agenda items.

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The numbers surpass Trump’s tally of 85, which was secured with Senate Republicans in the first half of a historically transformational effort to reshape the federal courts.

Beyond the overall numbers, the nominees selected by Biden and shepherded through the chamber by Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin of Illinois, also reflect a commitment to rethink the profile of those considered for the high-profile positions.

Schumer said the new judges bring a lot of diversity and variety in a single two-year stretch. “And of course it’s not just the diversity of demography that matters: in the last two years the Senate has confirmed more civil rights lawyers, public defenders, election attorneys, immigration lawyers than we typically see in this chamber.”

“When he talks about rights and liberties, he knows that in the end those rights and liberties are decided by federal judges, so the makeup of the federal judiciary is connected to everything else we do,” Klain said.

In 2023, the Senate will remain in the control of Democrats, who have mostly voted in lockstep to support Biden’s judges. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a recent statement that they’re just getting started. It’s unlikely Biden can shift the balance of power on every federal appeals court in the country over the next two years. That all depends on time and retirements of current judges. And as for the nation’s highest court, former President Donald Trump cemented a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, one that’s already frustrated Biden’s agenda on reproductive rights, climate change and gun safety measures.