On Feb. 25, 2022, President Joe Biden announced he would nominate Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court. If confirmed, Jackson would be the first Black woman to reside on the Court. She has caught the heart of America and is becoming a figure of change in our country. But who is Judge Jackson?
Jackson is a D.C native who grew up in south Florida. She graduated high school where she predicted she would be a lawyer and have a judicial appointment. She graduated magna cum laude with a degree in government in 1992 from Harvard University. She also received a law degree from Harvard in 1996. After college, she worked as a reporter and researcher for TIME Magazine and was a supervising editor for the Harvard Law Review.
Before her career in the courtroom, she clerked for many judges in district courts and even Supreme Court Justice, Steven Breyer. She also worked as an assistant federal public defender in Washington D.C., and served as vice chair of the U.S Sentencing Commission for many years. In her career as a public defender, she worked in many Guantanamo-related cases, most famously defending Khi Ali Gul.
Near the end of his second term, President Barack Obama nominated her for a district court seat in D.C. and was confirmed in 2013. Jackson was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate in 2021. Most recently, President Biden nominated her to the court in February 2022.
In her career, she has issued many prominent rulings. In 2019, she ruled against the Trump administration in many cases, including the former president’s attempt to stop colleagues from testifying before Congress. Many of her rulings have also been overturned, such as Trump’s attempt to quicken mass deportations.
She is married to fellow graduate and surgeon Patrick Jackson, and the pair have two daughters, Talia and Leila. She is related by marriage to former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has praised her character, calling her “an amazing person.”
Judge Jackson’s nomination means so much to people across America. The notion of a Black woman on the Supreme Court would be a large step towards diversity in the U.S. judicial system, and would add representation to a flawed criminal justice system.