Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Nominated to U.S. Supreme Court

President Joe Biden has nom­i­nat­ed fed­er­al appeals court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (pic­tured) to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court jus­tice, ful­fill­ing his cam­paign pledge to select an African American woman for the Court. If con­firmed, Jackson would be the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court. 

Announcing Jackson’s nom­i­na­tion on February 25, 2022, President Biden said, ​“For too long, our gov­ern­ment, our courts haven’t looked like America. I believe it’s time that we have a court that reflects the full tal­ents and great­ness of our nation with a nom­i­nee of extra­or­di­nary qual­i­fi­ca­tions, and that we inspire all young peo­ple to believe that they can one day serve their coun­try at the highest level.” 

Biden select­ed Jackson to fill the seat of retir­ing Justice Stephen Breyer, a long-time mem­ber of the Court’s mod­er­ate-to-lib­er­al wing. Jackson, who is a for­mer law clerk to the retir­ing jus­tice, is cur­rent­ly a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and pre­vi­ous­ly served eight years as a fed­er­al dis­trict court judge in Washington, DC. Having rep­re­sent­ed crim­i­nal defen­dants as a lawyer in the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of the District of Columbia, she would also be the first pub­lic defend­er to become a Supreme Court justice. 

No Supreme Court jus­tice since Thurgood Marshall has had sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence rep­re­sent­ing indi­gent defen­dants in criminal cases.

In her remarks at the nom­i­na­tion cer­e­mo­ny, Jackson said, ​“If I’m for­tu­nate enough to be con­firmed as the next asso­ciate jus­tice of the Supreme Court United States, I can only hope that my life and career, my love of this coun­try and the Constitution, and my com­mit­ment to uphold­ing the rule of law and the sacred prin­ci­ples upon which this great nation was found­ed, will inspire future gen­er­a­tions of Americans.”

Because her judi­cial expe­ri­ence has been in Washington, DC, which does not have the death penal­ty, Jackson has not been called upon to issue a judi­cial opin­ion in any cap­i­tal case. She has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in oth­er aspects of crim­i­nal law, includ­ing rep­re­sent­ing Guantánamo Bay detainees in habeas cor­pus chal­lenges to the legal­i­ty of their con­fine­ment, giv­ing effect to the U.S. Supreme Court’s land­mark rul­ing in 2004 that the detainees must be pro­vid­ed access to the fed­er­al courts. Jackson also served as the Vice Chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, where she worked to reduce dis­par­i­ties in fed­er­al sentencing practices. 

During her con­fir­ma­tion to the U.S. Court of Appeals, she wrote of the impor­tance of a robust pub­lic defense sys­tem. ​“Having lawyers who can set aside their own per­son­al beliefs about their client’s alleged behav­ior or their client’s propen­si­ty to com­mit crimes ben­e­fits all per­sons in the United States,” she wrote, ​“because it incen­tivizes the gov­ern­ment to inves­ti­gate accu­sa­tions thor­ough­ly and to pro­tect the rights of the accused dur­ing the crim­i­nal jus­tice process.” Such rep­re­sen­ta­tion, she said, ​“reduces the threat of arbi­trary or unfound­ed depri­va­tions of individual liberty.”

The National Council for Negro Women issued a state­ment on the his­toric impor­tance of Jackson’s nom­i­na­tion, writ­ing, ​“The appoint­ment of Ketanji Brown Jackson is a water­shed moment for women, for peo­ple of African descent and for democ­ra­cy itself. It proves that the cen­turies-long dis­qual­i­fi­er — being a Black woman — no longer exists. … The nom­i­na­tion says that final­ly there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for all qual­i­fied per­sons to serve at the high­est lev­el of this nation’s judi­cia­ry. … As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said, ​‘We will all prof­it from a more diverse, inclu­sive soci­ety, under­stand­ing, accom­mo­dat­ing, even cel­e­brat­ing our dif­fer­ences, while pulling togeth­er for the common good.’”