What To Expect From Ketanji Brown Jackson On The Supreme Court

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson seems poised to soon join the Supreme Court. What can we expect from her time as the next justice?

We stream our live show every day at 12 PM ET.

We need your help to keep providing free videos! Support the Majority Report's video content by going to

Watch the Majority Report live MF at 12 p.m. EST at youtube.com/samseder or listen via daily podcast at

Download our FREE app

SUPPORT the show by becoming a member

We Have Merch!!!

LIKE us on Facebook

FOLLOW us on Twitter

SUBSCRIBE to us on YouTube

Sam: Ketanji Brown Jackson. give me your sense of a. how you think she is going to fit in on this court. and keeping in mind forefronted that she very well may serve the vast majority of her term being in the minority of justices. So like what generically speaking if that's the case versus one being on the majority side do you need to do you need to be a different justice for that moment. and what should that be if for those of us who are you know want the court to be as left as possible and you know I don't know that these the three you know liberal justices are necessarily that left. but they're certainly more left than the other six on the court.

Guest: Yeah so I mean I could speak to how Ketanji Brown Jackson has behaved as a lower court judge. which is I mean she has a reputation for writing very very long opinions. and she is especially likely to write like 100 page or more opinions in the most politically charged cases. you know cases where you know about whether Donald Trump could be forced to testify. or Donald trump's advisors can be forced to testify or not. cases about whether a trump program is lawful or not. and this is true I mean sometimes she ruled in favor of trump. Sometimes she ruled against trump. but those opinions tend to be very very long. and I think the reason why she took that approach is because she knew her decisions would ultimately be appealed to a very hostile supreme court. and so she knew that she couldn't cut corners. that she had to show that every part of her reasoning was airtight. she had to walk people through it. You know she had to assume that the people reading her opinions were adults and wanted to know what was going on. and then you know I mean I see the opposite like when I cover the fifth circuit which is this extraordinarily partisan conservative court that oversees Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi. often you get these really short-clipped opinions that declare things without much justification. and you know when you have a supreme court majority you can get away with that. because you know they just have to like the outcome. you know it doesn't matter if you've got good reasoning. I think KetanjiBrown Jackson knows that when you are swimming upstream against a right-wing court you have to make sure all your t's are crossed and all your Is are dotted. and I suspect that that's what we're going to see from her as a dissenting justice. if you know just believing that through sheer force of the effort of making the most comprehensive possible case she can maybe shame her colleagues into behaving sensibly.