Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson (born Ketanji Onyika Brown in 1970), became the first Black woman to become a Justice on the United States Supreme Court. She was sworn in and became an associate justice at noon on June 30, 2022, when retiring Justice Stephen Breyer stepped down.
Jackson told the crowd gathered on the South Lawn on the day she was confirmed by the Senate in a contentious vote, that it had taken her family one generation to go from enduring segregation to putting a woman on the Supreme Court, but she noted that it had taken the country much longer. She said:
“It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, but we’ve made it. We’ve made it. All of us.”
In contemplating her status as a role model for other women and Black people, she paraphrased from Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise” to underscore her point: “I do so now while bringing the gifts my ancestors gave. I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”
Judge Jackson grew up in a home focused on law and education. Her father, Johnny Brown, attended the University of Miami School of Law and became chief attorney for the Miami-Dade County School Board. Her mother, Ellery, was the school principal at the New World School of the Arts in Miami. Born in Washington D.C., she grew up in Miami.
In High School, she distinguished herself as a champion debater, winning the national oratory title at the National Catholic Forensic League championships in New Orleans during her senior year. She has recalled her experience with high school debate as one "that I can say without hesitation was the one activity that best prepared me for future success in law and in life."
After high school, Jackson attended Harvard University to study government, having applied despite her guidance counselor's advice to set her sights lower. She took classes in drama and performed improv comedy, forming a diverse friend group. As a member of the Black Students Association, she led protests against a student who displayed a Confederate flag from his dormitory window and protested a lack of full-time professors in the Afro-American Studies Department. She graduated from Harvard in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude. Her senior thesis was titled "The Hand of Oppression: Plea Bargaining Processes and the Coercion of Criminal Defendants". She then attended Harvard Law School, where she was a supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review, graduating in 1996 with a Juris Doctor, cum laude.
From the late 1990s until 2010, Judge Jackson worked for both private law firms and in the U.S. Court system, including as a clerk for Justice Stephen Breyer who she later replaced on the Supreme Court. From 2005 to 2007, Jackson was an assistant federal public defender in Washington, D.C., where she handled cases before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. A review by The Washington Post of cases Jackson handled during her time as a public defender showed that "she won uncommon victories against the government that shortened or erased lengthy prison terms."
In 2009, President Obama nominated Jackson as vice chair of the United States Sentencing Commission. The Senate Judiciary Committee favorably reported her nomination by voice vote on November 5, 2009, and the Senate confirmed her nomination by voice vote on February 11, 2010.
In 2012, Obama nominated Jackson to serve as a United States district judge for the District of Columbia. Republican U.S. Representative Paul Ryan, a relative by marriage, introduced Jackson at her December 2012 confirmation hearing and said, "Our politics may differ, but my praise for Ketanji's intellect, for her character, for her integrity, it is unequivocal." Obama included Judge Jackson’s name on a short list of potential Supreme Court nominees in 2016, opting for Merrick Garland. Jackson would serve as a district judge until 2021 when she was then elevated to the post on the U.S. Court of Appeals.
During her time serving as a District Court Justice and later as a Judge on the Court of Appeals, Jackson issued several decisions that ran counter to the Trump administration and put her at odds with conservatives in the Senate. For instance, in June 2018, Jackson presided over two cases challenging the Department of Health and Human Services decision to terminate grants for teen pregnancy prevention programs two years early. She ruled that the decision to terminate the grants early without explanation was arbitrary and capricious. Her decisions were usually pro-work and pro-union as well, receiving the ire of many Republicans.
Early in 2022, when Justice Breyer announced his pending retirement, the Biden administration had already pledged to place a woman of color on the Supreme Court, and Ketanji Brown-Jackson’s name was at the top of the list. Her potential nomination to the Supreme Court was supported by civil rights and liberal advocacy organizations but was opposed by Republican Party leaders and senators.
President Biden announced Jackson as his pick for the Supreme Court in February and her confirmation hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee was set for March 21. The Judiciary Committee deadlocked on her nomination by an 11–11 vote, the Senate discharged the committee from further consideration of her nomination by a 53–47 vote. The next day, the Senate voted to proceed with her nomination by a 53–47 vote. On April 7 the full Senate voted on her nomination which won by again, a vote of 53-47. Republican Senators Romney, Murkowski, and Collins joined the Democrats to approve her nomination.
The confirmation process was a brutal and hostile one for Jackson. Several Republican Senators tried to disparage not only her decisions but even her character. President Biden said that Judge Jackson had endured “verbal abuse” and “vile” personal attacks but had shown poise through more than 20 hours of questioning in confirmation hearings that at times turned bruising.
Jackson’s debating skills have shown their merit as a Justice on the Supreme Court over the past year and a half. Two contributors to the SCOTUS Blog noted that, since joining the Court at the beginning of the 2022 term, Jackson was the most active participant in oral arguments, speaking an average of 1,350 words per argument, while the eight other justices each spoke on average fewer than 1,000. On February 28, 2023, Jackson authored her first majority opinion for a unanimous court in Delaware v. Pennsylvania, which involved how unclaimed money from MoneyGrams is distributed among individual states.
Jackson is married to surgeon Patrick Graves Jackson, whom she met at Harvard College. Theirs is an interracial marriage. He is a descendant of Continental Congress delegate Jonathan Jackson and is related to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. The couple have two daughters. Jackson traces her heritage to enslaved ancestors from Georgia. In a 2017 speech, she said, "I am fairly certain that if you traced my family lineage back past my grandparents—who were raised in Georgia, by the way—you would find that my ancestors were slaves on both sides."
Judge Jackson has only been on the Supreme Court for a short time and has many years of service left. She will continue to be both a role model for young Black women showing that there are no limits to what they can achieve, and an outstanding jurist for the American people.
Jackson’s judicial philosophy is summed up in this comment she made to the Washington Post just after her confirmation hearings:
"The rule of law is about people's faith in the institution. You sometimes hear a lot of talk about the importance of public perception — having faith in the judiciary. I think one of the ways that judges can help promote that is to not be isolated in an ivory tower but actually be in communication with the people whom the law governs."
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