“Justice demands this result.” That’s what Ketanji Brown Jackson said in 2011 after the U.S. Sentencing  Commission knocked as much as three years off the prison terms of crack-cocaine convicts. As vice chair of the commission, Jackson believed the nation’s drug laws were overly harsh and especially “unfair” to blacks.

A month earlier, Jackson had shrugged off Justice Department warnings that the decision — which made more than 12,000 federal crack inmates eligible for early release — could flood the streets with dangerous criminals who would likely reoffend.

“[B]y keeping them in longer, it doesn’t seem to make a difference with regard to whether or not they recidivate,” Jackson reasoned in a June 2011 commission hearing in Washington, according to transcripts reviewed by RealClearInvestigations.

Then-U.S. Attorney Stephanie Rose objected: “It does protect…