Lead with love: My take on Judge Jackson’s confirmation hearings

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to a young man who will earn his master of divinity degree this May. Curious about the benefits of three years of theological education, I asked him what his most important takeaways were. He cited many, but the one that captured my heart was, lead with love. Those three words became the lens through which I watched the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. She embodied for me what it means to lead with love.

Leading with love is ancient wisdom, the basis for the best guidelines for human interactions I have ever found. Better known as the Beatitudes, these guidelines were not given to pacify the poor but restrain the privileged. When universally adhered to, they have great potential for ensuring justice and peace. They speak to humility, empathy, inner grit, and other virtues. They’re what love looks like when we treat others the way we’d like to be treated.

Leading with love sets a very high bar. It requires a person to remain poised, patient, and respectful when, in the case of Judge Jackson, she’s relentlessly interrupted, her judicial decisions are whittled down into politically charged buzzwords, and the questions posed to her run the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous. 

Leading with love makes a person reluctant to talk about her faith, even though it’s obvious that she has it. Not faith as a mere set of beliefs, but faith that shapes how a person behaves. I saw in Judge Jackson a humility that knew not to rate her own piety on a scale of 1 to 10, as one senator asked her to do. She was self-aware enough to receive both positive and negative assessments of her lifework with a sense of peace. She handled exchanges that were demeaning with the strength of grace and the power of silence. To borrow a line from a Rudyard Kipling poem, she met “Triumph and Disaster / And treat[ed] those two impostors just the same.”

Confirmation hearings are long and exhausting ordeals. They wear on your emotions. Judge Jackson’s facial expressions and body language often gave away her frustration with a grinding process. But she was undergirded by years of support from family and friends, and an enduring admonition to “persevere.”

Persevere. That one word lifted Judge Jackson’s spirit on a day during her freshman year when she was feeling homesick and questioning her college choice. As she was walking across Harvard Yard, a Black woman she didn’t know was walking toward her. When they met, the woman leaned over and said, “Persevere.” And so Judge Jackson did, graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University and cum laude from Harvard Law School. 

I had wanted Judge Jackson to make it through the hearings without ever shedding a tear. Tears are often interpreted as a sign of weakness. But leading with love allows for the healthy expression of basic human emotions. Sen. Cory Booker’s shower of affirmations was too much to handle near the end of the grueling process. Tears swelled in Judge Jackson’s eyes and mine, too. Mine came from heartfelt solidarity with her and every Black woman – past, present, but hopefully none in the future – who has had to deal with unwarranted indignities. 

In our societal pecking order, Black women step up to the plate with two strikes against us – we are Black, and we are women. Then we’re thrown a series of screwballs, and against all odds, we sometimes have the blessed fortune to knock them out of the park. For many of us, when we’re reminded of what we have accomplished, our tears show the effect on our hearts, minds, and bodies of this empowering truth: We are loved. 

Leading with love isn’t easy. It calls for integrity, regardless of the potential personal cost. Judge Jackson once served as a federal public defender. That’s often not seen as the wisest career move for someone later nominated for the Supreme Court, since some may associate you with the people you defend. Yet, tasked with the responsibility to defend people accused of threatening the safety of our country, she offered them the best defense possible, which is what every defense attorney is to do. She took some heat for that during the hearings, but staying accountable to the Constitution and the law of our land is bedrock to our form of government. When you lead with love, you must be prepared for your good to be turned against you.

I am inspired by the singular honor and immense responsibility that will likely be placed on Judge Jackson, now that at least one Republican senator has offered her support. And I am proud of her demonstration of the heights where leading with love can take us. Our lives are not only measured by what we achieve, but also by the integrity we display on our way to great achievement. Love is the highest law.

While I have no aspirations to spend years earning another degree – in theology or law – I do see a need to study and embody the wisdom of the Beatitudes. It will be time well spent – not only for me, but for everyone who has to interact with me.