What the new SCOTUS could mean for marijuana legalization

There will be a new Justice on the United States Supreme Court, and in all likelihood the election of President Biden will be historic. Confirmation hearings began last week for Ketanji Brown Jackson, the likely successor to Justice Stephen Breyer, who is set to step down from the Supreme Court this year.

If Jackson is appointed, she would be the first African American woman on the US Supreme Court and also one of the few Supreme Court justices in history with experience as a public defender. Jackson will most likely be confirmed within a month or two, bringing with him a new set of experiences, expertise and a unique understanding of the legal framework.

What, if anything, would this historic appointment mean for the future of marijuana legalization?

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Jackson, like most Supreme Court justices and previous nominees, has remained silent about her own personal views on many contentious issues in the United States during her confirmation hearings, including on the issue of marijuana legalization. In fact, the only judge to have given any opinion on the subject recently was Justice Clarence Thomas, a Conservative.

Judge Thomas may be conservative, but his recent official statement on the legal status of marijuana shows that he, like many others, is increasingly frustrated with America’s indecisiveness and confused the outdated logic on the matter.

“The federal government’s current approach to marijuana bears little resemblance to the airtight statewide ban that a narrowly divided court deemed necessary to justify the government’s blanket ban,” Thomas said wrote in an official statement. Times are indeed changing.

While Jackson hasn’t made her views on marijuana public, her service as a public defender means she has hands-on experience with drug laws and has seen firsthand how they (often unfairly) affect lives.

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“No other lawyers in the system see the law from the perspective of public defenders,” said Premal Dharia, executive director of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration. said the Harvard Gazette, Jackson’s Law School Alma Mater. “Public defenders are the control of the system against government intrusion, against police misconduct, against legal misconduct, against all these different parts of the system.”

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Jackson reportedly went into public defense on purpose, which is not a popular avenue for those seeking a seat on the highest courts. She did it because “she clearly wanted to see how the system worked in reality and was more interested in the defense side as she was trying to help people who came from very unfortunate backgrounds,” AJ Kramer, a public defender who Jackson knows said the New York Times.

This unique perspective will be an important perspective for a court that currently has little firsthand experience of drug incarceration, or understanding of how disproportionately these laws affect people of color. “Because people of color are disproportionately arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated, their work is also intrinsically linked to the fight for racial justice,” says Vox wrote regarding Jackson’s unique career.

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Jackson would replace Justice Stephen Breyer, who has been a reliable liberal voice on the Supreme Court but has never expressed an official favorable opinion on marijuana legalization or voted in a way that suggests he holds such an opinion. Perhaps Jackson’s generational separation from Breyer and her unique experience will give marijuana laws a fair jolt the next time they’re up for debate in the country’s highest court.