Ketanji Brown Jackson
Ketanji Brown Jackson is an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, having been sworn in on June 30, 2022. Born on September 14, 1970, in Washington, D.C., she grew up in Cutler Bay, Florida. Jackson's educational background includes graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University and earning her juris doctor degree from Harvard Law School, where she also served on the Harvard Law Review. Her legal career has spanned various roles, including serving as a federal public defender and as a judge on both the U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Nominated by President Joe Biden in February 2022, she became the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, following a confirmation process that highlighted her judicial philosophy and background in public service. As a justice, Jackson has actively engaged in significant cases, particularly those concerning voting rights and environmental issues. Outside of her professional life, she is married to surgeon Patrick Jackson, and they have two daughters.
Ketanji Brown Jackson
Federal judge
- Born: September 14, 1970
- Place of Birth: Washington, DC, U.S.
Significance: Ketanji Brown Jackson is a United States Supreme Court justice. Before her February 2022 nomination to the Supreme Court by President Joe Biden, Jackson worked as a lawyer and judge in a variety of roles, including chair and commissioner of the US Sentencing Commission, federal district court judge, and federal appellate judge. She was officially sworn in as a Supreme Court justice on June 30, 2022.
Background
Ketanji Brown Jackson was born Ketanji Onyika Brown on September 14, 1970. She was born in Washington, DC, but grew up in Cutler Bay, a suburb of Miami, Florida. Her mother, Ellery Brown, was a science teacher who became the principal of a magnet school in Miami. Her father, Johnny Brown, was also a high school teacher who later became a lawyer and the chief counsel of the School Board of Miami-Dade County.
Jackson attended public schools in Miami-Dade County and excelled as a student. She served in student government at both Palmetto Junior High and Miami Palmetto Senior High School and was a debate champion who participated in local and national competitions.
Following her 1988 high school graduation, Jackson studied at Harvard University. She graduated magna cum laude in 1992 with a degree in government. After taking a gap year to work as a researcher and reporter for Time magazine in New York City, she entered Harvard Law School. There, she worked on the Harvard Law Review and served as its supervising editor from 1995 to 1996. In 1996, she graduated cum laude with a juris doctor degree.
Legal and Judicial Careers
During her first few years after law school, Jackson clerked for three judges at the federal level and worked as an associate in private practice. From 1996 to 1997, she clerked for Judge Patti B. Saris of the US District Court in Massachusetts. The following year, she clerked for Judge Bruce M. Selya of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Rhode Island. She then spent a year as an associate at Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin in Washington, DC, where she specialized in civil litigation on cases that included securities fraud, mortgage fraud, bankruptcy, breach of contract, and employment law. Later, she clerked for Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the United States Supreme Court during the 1999–2000 term.
Jackson returned to private practice in 2000 as an associate in the litigation department of Goodwin Procter in Boston, Massachusetts. She handled pretrial matters for civil litigation, including court pleadings and discovery. In 2002, she moved back to Washington, DC, and became an associate at the Feinberg Group. There, she worked in mediation and arbitration, including mass-tort liability cases.
After one year at the Feinberg Group, Jackson took a job with the US Sentencing Commission, an independent federal agency responsible for making federal sentencing guidelines more proportional and consistent. From 2003 to 2005, she was an assistant special counsel at the commission, where she helped develop new sentencing guidelines, including amendments to the commission’s official Sentencing Guidelines Manual.
In 2005, she left the Sentencing Commission to take a job as a federal public defender, citing a desire to learn more about the federal criminal justice system as well as the people impacted by federal sentencing guidelines. For two years, she worked as an assistant federal public defender in the Office of the Federal Public Defender, where she defended low-income individuals convicted of a crime as their cases went through the federal appellate court in Washington, DC.
While working as a federal public defender, Jackson represented Khiali Gul, an Afghan man detained in Afghanistan by the US military in 2002. Gul, who had been held in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, was challenging his status as an enemy combatant; Jackson filed multiple motions related to Gul’s case until it was transferred to a different district court judge.
Jackson once again returned to private practice in 2007 to work in the appellate litigation group of Morrison & Foerster in Washington, DC. In this role, she handled both civil and criminal cases and wrote briefs and petitions to the Supreme Court and other appellate courts throughout the United States. The cases she worked on at Morrison & Foerster involved personal injury claims, federal wiretapping, and a range of other issues.
In 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Jackson to a seat on the US Sentencing Commission. The Senate confirmed her with unanimous consent in February 2010. After her confirmation, Obama appointed her vice chair of the commission. As vice chair, Jackson was responsible for analyzing and reforming sentencing guidelines. She initiated an overhaul of harsh sentencing guidelines for drug offenses, which reduced the sentences of thousands of convicted individuals. Jackson remained in this role until 2014.
Jackson became a district judge of the federal trial court in Washington, DC, in May 2013, having been nominated by Obama the previous year. During her eight years in this role, Jackson wrote, by her own estimate, 562 opinions. Among them were several opinions on administrative law related to President Donald Trump; for example, in 2019, she ruled that Donald McGahn, Trump’s former White House counsel, had to answer a subpoena despite Trump’s assertion of testimonial immunity. In her opinion, she wrote, “Presidents are not kings,” and added that “the United States has a government of laws, not of men.”
In June 2021, President Joe Biden appointed Jackson to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington, DC. She participated in the panel of judges who considered the appeals of several cases involving the Trump administration, including the panel that ruled that Trump needed to turn over his records related to the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Supreme Court Nomination
On February 25, 2022, President Biden nominated Jackson for a position on the Supreme Court to replace Justice Stephen Breyer, who had announced his pending retirement. Biden had promised to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court, ideally someone with a strong background in public service. Some Republicans took issue with Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman, arguing that Biden should nominate the most qualified person regardless of race. During Jackson's confirmation hearings in the Senate, many Republicans also criticized Jackson's judicial record, arguing that she was too liberal and lenient on crime. Despite stiff opposition from most Republican Senators, the Senate voted 53–47 in favor of Jackson's confirmation on April 7, 2022. She became a justice in waiting, expected to take the bench after Breyer's retirement in summer 2022.
Supreme Court Career
On June 30, 2022, Justice Breyer retired from the Supreme Court. That same day, Jackson was officially sworn in as a Supreme Court justice.
Jackson quickly settled into her new role, voting on her first case on July 21, 2022. On September 30, 2022, the Supreme Court held Jackson's investiture ceremony, in which Jackson was formally inducted into the Court ahead of its new term. Observers praised Jackson's debut oral arguments, noting that she did not take a backseat as many new justices historically have and was quick to participate and ask questions. For instance, in a case in October 2022 debating Alabama's congressional map that brought into question the voting rights of Black people, she was vocal in stressing the importance of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution and its goal to compensate for harms inflicted on Black people following the end of slavery. Jackson was also outspoken in a case debating the Clean Water Act and its impact on the nation's wetlands, proving she would be a powerful addition to the liberal minority of the Supreme Court.
Jackson published her memoir, Lovely One, in 2024.
Impact
Jackson is the first Black woman and the first federal public defender to become a Supreme Court justice. Her confirmation also made her one of the few Supreme Court justices with an extensive background in criminal defense.
Personal Life
Jackson and Patrick Jackson, a surgeon, met as undergraduate students at Harvard University and married in 1996. They have two daughters, Talia and Leila.
Bibliography
Chávez, Martin, et al. “Eight Current Overseers Share Their Unique Stories.” Interviews by Colleen Walsh. Harvard Gazette, Harvard University, 16 June 2020, news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/06/eight-current-overseers-share-their-unique-stories/. Accessed 14 Oct. 20242.
de Vogue, Ariane. “Ketanji Brown Jackson: The Personal and Legal Record of the Supreme Court Nominee.” CNN, 25 Feb. 2022, www.cnn.com/2022/02/02/politics/ketanji-brown-jackson-profile/index.html. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.
Howe, Amy. “Profile of a Potential Nominee: Ketanji Brown Jackson.” SCOTUSblog, 1 Feb. 2022, www.scotusblog.com/2022/02/profile-of-a-potential-nominee-ketanji-brown-jackson/. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.
Hulse, Carl, and Annie Karni. “Jackson Confirmed as First Black Woman to Sit on Supreme Court.” The New York Times, 7 Apr. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/04/07/us/politics/ketanji-brown-jackson-supreme-court.html. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.
Hurley, Lawrence. "Justice Jackson Makes Waves in First Supreme Court Arguments." NBC News, 5 Oct. 2022, www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/justice-jackson-makes-waves-first-supreme-court-arguments-rcna50707. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.
Jackson, Ketanji Brown. "Life's Work: An Interview with Ketanji Brown Jackson." Interview by Alison Beard. Harvard Business Review Magazine, Nov.-Dec. 2024, hbr.org/2024/11/lifes-work-an-interview-with-ketanji-brown-jackson. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.
Jackson, Ketanji Brown. “Questionnaire for Judicial Nominees.” Senate Committee on the Judiciary, United States, 2021, www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Jackson%20Senate%20Judiciary%20Questionnaire3.pdf. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.
Millhiser, Ian. “Who Is Ketanji Brown Jackson?” Vox, 25 Feb. 2022, www.vox.com/2022/2/25/22912842/supreme-court-nominee-ketanji-brown-jackson-biden. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.
“Watch Live: Ketanji Brown Jackson Sworn in to the Supreme Court.” WBUR, 30 June 2022, www.wbur.org/news/2022/06/30/ketanji-brown-jackson-swearing-in-ceremony. Accessed14 Oct. 2024.
Weaver, Jay. “Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Background Is Unusual for a Supreme Court Nominee. It Involves Miami.” Miami Herald, 25 Feb. 2022, www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article258132708.html. Accessed 14 Oct. 2024.