Senate Confirms Ketanji Brown Jackson as First Black Woman to Serve on U.S. Supreme Court

Ketanji Brown Jackson has been con­firmed as the first African-American woman to serve as a jus­tice of the United States Supreme Court.

On April 7, 2022, by a vote of 53 – 47, the U.S. Senate con­firmed President Joe Biden’s nom­i­na­tion of Judge Jackson to replace retir­ing Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, for whom she pre­vi­ous­ly served as a law clerk. Jackson will be sworn in after Breyer’s retire­ment takes effect at the end of the 2021 – 22 Supreme Court term. 

“I have ded­i­cat­ed my career to pub­lic ser­vice because I love this coun­try and our Constitution and the rights that make us free,” Jackson said in com­ments at the White House fol­low­ing her con­fir­ma­tion. ​“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,” she said. ​“But we’ve made it. We’ve made it, all of us. … In my fam­i­ly, it took just one gen­er­a­tion to go from seg­re­ga­tion to the Supreme Court of the United States.”

After con­tentious con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings, Jackson received the sup­port of all 50 Democratic Senators, as well as three Republicans. Republican mem­bers of the Senate Judiciary Committee ques­tioned Jackson’s work rep­re­sent­ing Guantánamo Bay detainees dur­ing her time as a fed­er­al pub­lic defend­er. ​“Federal pub­lic defend­ers do not get to pick their clients,” she said, explain­ing that the right to rep­re­sen­ta­tion is a ​“core con­sti­tu­tion­al val­ue,” even for peo­ple accused of the most serious crimes.

A 1996 grad­u­ate of Harvard Law School, Jackson clerked for Judge Patti B. Saris of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts and Judge Bruce M. Selya of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, before receiv­ing a clerk­ship for Justice Breyer dur­ing the 1999 – 2000 Supreme Court term. Her crim­i­nal jus­tice expe­ri­ence includes work­ing as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in the appeals divi­sion of the Office of the Federal Public Defender in the District of Columbia and serv­ing on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, includ­ing three years as its Vice Chair.

In 2012, President Barack Obama nom­i­nat­ed Jackson to serve on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and she was con­firmed by voice vote by the Senate in March 2013. In June 2021, the Senate con­firmed her nom­i­na­tion by President Biden to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Jackson will be the first Supreme Court Justice to have worked in a fed­er­al pub­lic defender’s office. In a col­umn for Washington Monthly, con­sti­tu­tion­al schol­ar Garrett Epps not­ed the sig­nif­i­cance of that mile­stone. ​“Without a zeal­ous defense, crim­i­nal ​‘jus­tice’ is mere­ly brute force wield­ed against the pow­er­less,” Epps wrote. The accused ter­ror­ists Jackson rep­re­sent­ed while in the fed­er­al defender’s office ​“are human, and our own Supreme Court has said that they have rights under the Constitution, and those rights mean noth­ing with­out legal protection.” 

“In the midst of many joys at this his­toric moment,” Epps con­clud­ed, ​“I rejoice that the Supreme Court’s next jus­tice has, at times, spo­ken for those who would oth­er­wise have no voice.”