On Feb. 25, 2022, President Biden nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer upon his retirement. Judge Jackson’s nomination to become the 116th associate justice is historic not just because, if confirmed, she will be the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, but also because she is the first nominee with prior experience as a public defender.

Upon their respective nominations, this column reviewed Circuit Court opinions authored by then-future Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to gauge how each might approach criminal tax cases that come before the court. Most Supreme Court commentators agree that Judge Jackson’s approximately 500 judicial opinions suggest she will be a reliable liberal vote to replace her former boss, Justice Breyer, for whom she clerked during the 1998-1999 term. Her judicial record, however, provides scant evidence regarding how she will approach cases that might affect tax practitioners: Judge Jackson did not author any substantive opinions on criminal tax matters in her eight years as a district court judge and she has not sat on any panels that decided criminal tax cases in her brief tenure on the D.C. Circuit.