Reports: Biden to nominate Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court

Reports indicate that President Joe Biden will nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, fulfilling a campaign promise to select the first black woman to sit on the high court.

Jackson, 51, currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. As a former clerk for retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, Jackson was widely considered to be a front-runner for the nomination.

CNN reported that Biden called her Thursday night to offer the nomination and she accepted.

The president is expected to make a public announcement about the nomination Friday.

Jackson, a native of Washington, D.C., has experience as a public defender and member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, as well as a nearly nine-year tenure as a federal judge. She served on the federal district court in D.C. as an appointee of President Barack Obama before Biden nominated her for the D.C. Circuit last year.

There is some expectation that Jackson will face a smooth path to confirmation in the U.S. Senate. Her confirmation to the D.C. Circuit last year was supported by three Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Additionally, she is a relative by marriage of former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who ran for vice president on the 2012 Republican ticket.

Jackson's confirmation to the Supreme Court would not change the makeup of the court, where six Republican-appointed justices hold a majority over the three Democratic appointees.

During the confirmation process, Jackson's record will face scrutiny, including several high-profile rulings that were later overturned by higher courts.

"Judge Jackson's record of reversals by the left-leaning D.C. Circuit is troubling for anyone concerned about the rule of law," Judicial Crisis Network president Carrie Severino told Fox News Digital earlier this month. "For example, in Make the Road New York v. Wolf, a D.C. Circuit panel composed of a majority of Democratic nominees concluded that Jackson had set aside a Trump administration rule where there was no legal basis to do so."

"Cases like these suggest that Jackson might be willing in politically charged cases to ignore the law to deliver a particular policy outcome, and that's not what we want to see from a Supreme Court justice," she said.

Other overturned rulings by Jackson include a 2019 case centered on an order that expanded the Department of Homeland Security's definition of which non-citizens could be deported. A 2-1 decision by the D.C. Circuit Court said that reviewing DHS policy did not fall under the Administrative Procedure Act, overturning Jackson's opinion.

Another case involving three orders on the collective bargaining power for federal employees was overturned unanimously by the D.C. Circuit Court, which ruled Jackson did not have jurisdiction to adjudicate the case.

Senate Republicans previously brought up these overturned cases and others during her confirmation to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia last year.