History is repeating itself with Ketanji Brown Jackson’s race- based questioning

The aggressive, race-based questioning of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson mirrored the treatment doled out to the first Black justice Thurgood Marshall more than 50 year ago, a top legal scholar has said.

Ahead of this week’s questioning of Jackson by members of the Senate judiciary committee, an event marked by performances by some Republican senators widely condemned for their dishonesty, grand-standing and even rudeness, legal scholar Margaret Russell took a look at the experience of Marshall, who made history in 1967 when Lyndon Johnson nominated him to be the first Black justice on the Supreme Court.

Russell, an associate professor of law at Santa Clara University in California, found the questioning of Marshall, who died in 1993, often focused on questions of crime, a topic that has long been used to try and demonise Black candidates and communities.