Washington, DC - Today, President Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to be the next Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States, and I wanted to provide the FOP’s perspective on this nominee as the confirmation process begins.

Judge Jackson comes from a law enforcement family, with two uncles who were career law enforcement officers: one was a Miami-Dade County sex crimes detective, and the other rose through the ranks of the City of Miami Police Department to become the Chief of Police.  Her brother served as an undercover officer in a drug-sting unit in Baltimore after graduating from college, so she should know quite well the difficulties and dangers our officers face in the line of duty every single day. 

We all approach domestic policy issues from our own points of view and life experiences.  Therefore, when President Obama tapped Judge Jackson to be a Commissioner and Vice Chairman of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, where she led efforts to reduce mandatory minimums and to retroactively apply sentencing for certain drug crimes, we were not always in total accord with her views.  The FOP testified before the Commission on several occasions voicing our concerns with some of the proposals under consideration; however, we remained very much engaged on the issue of sentencing reform and with all of the stakeholder groups.  In large part, because of this engagement and good faith efforts by all of the groups and individuals involved, including Judge Jackson and the FOP, we reached important compromises which ultimately resulted in the passage of the historic First Step Act that was signed into law by President Trump.  The FOP has found that collaboration works far better than confrontation.

From our analysis of Judge Jackson’s record and some of her cases, we believe she has considered the facts and applied the law consistently and fairly on a range of issues.  There is little doubt that she has the temperament, intellect, legal experience, and family background to have earned this appointment.  We are reassured that, should she be confirmed, she would approach her future cases with an open mind and treat issues related to law enforcement fairly and justly.  We wish her well as the confirmation process begins.