Gov. DeSantis opines on impending U.S. Supreme Court vacancy

Gov. Ron DeSantis, asked Friday about an impending nomination of a Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, was unaware that one of the reported candidates has Florida roots, but hoped the nominee would show “a certain amount of humility.”

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit since last year, and was born in Washington, but grew up in Miami and attended Miami Palmetto Senior High School before heading to Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

DeSantis, during a news conference, seemed aware only of Jackson’s recent history.

“I don’t think anyone from Florida is being considered that I saw. I saw someone from California, Washington, D.C. So, if you clarify that I might be able to respond,” he told reporters.

“Look, at the end of the day, when you’re dealing with picks for the Supreme Court, you want people that are going to be faithful to the law and the Constitution and understand how our constitutional system was designed to have separate powers, where you have legislative, executive, judicial.

“The job of the judicial branch is to apply the law and Constitution. It’s not to rewrite the law and Constitution. And I think that judges that understand that, you know, you have to have a certain amount of humility to understand the proper role. Doesn’t mean you can’t be active in deciding cases properly before ya, and if you have to come down on the constitutional side, you have to do it and do it forcefully,” he said.

“But you’re not a philosopher king and you’re not hovering over the entire political system and basically being a super legislature. And I think the more that we’re in tune with the judiciary as Hamilton and Madison envisioned, and probably more powerfully as President Lincoln envisioned, I think the more we’re going to have support for a strong constitutional system.”

DeSantis didn’t explain the Lincoln reference and his press secretary, Chrisina Pushaw, hasn’t yet responded to a request for clarification. Interestingly, as president, Abraham Lincoln and congressional Republicans restructured the judiciary including the Supreme Court to break control by Southern sympathizers and confirm Lincoln’s capacity to wage the Civil War, according to Arizona State University history professor Calvin Schermerhorn.

If that was his intended point, it would be apt: DeSantis, himself, has taken advantage of the forced retirement of three liberal Florida Supreme Court justices to cement a conservative majority perfectly willing to cast off even recent precedents.

With the pending retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer, President Joe Biden has announced plans to make good on a campaign promise to elevate a Black woman to the nation’s highest court, where only three people of color have served: Thurgood Marshall, Clarence Thomas, and Sonia Sotomayor.

Additional possibilities for the nomination include California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger and Georgia U.S. District Court Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner.

DeSantis was at Port Everglades in Hollywood to announce $80 million in “resiliency” improvements intended to strengthen storm- and waste-water systems against storms. The governor is asking the Legislature to boost such spending to $1 billion, which, he said, with local matches, could double that amount.