Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Judicial Superpower

My new column for The Hill explains one more reason to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court. Here is the gist:

Ketanji Brown Jackson's judicial superpower: An appreciation of the human consequences of court rulings

There is another aspect of Jackson’s background that deserves more attention. She previously served as a U.S. district court judge for eight years, presiding over civil and criminal trials.

Unlike appellate judges and Supreme Court justices, trial judges must directly confront the impact they have on people’s lives. They see victims and witnesses as they testify, hear the parties explain their cases, determine the truth of claims and defenses and often tell people, to their faces, whether they will go free or spend years in prison. Although not as exalted or sweepingly influential as the Supreme Court, the trial courts are the forums where the most people actually encounter the law.

It is entirely possible that several of the others – perhaps Justices Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh or Chief Justice John Roberts – have never even observed a complex trial from beginning to end. A written trial record may provide sufficient information to affirm or reverse the outcome of any given case, but records alone can be a shaky basis for categorically instructing lower court judges on the conduct of future trials. It is as though there were members of the NBA rules committee who had diligently reviewed many shot charts without ever seeing a complete basketball game.

You can read the entire piece here.