SCOTUS Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson Has Fans On Both Sides Of The Aisle

One of President Joe Biden’s major campaign promises was to fill a potential Supreme Court vacancy with a Black woman, which would mark a historic first for the longtime predominantly white team of justices. After Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement announcement in January 2022, Biden is following through on the commitment by nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson, a current sitting judge on the United States court of appeals for the Washington DC circuit. A Harvard Law School graduate, 51-year-old Jackson’s decades in the court system include clerking for Justice Breyer and working to halt President Donald Trump’s efforts to stop the Russia investigation.

“President Biden sought a candidate with exceptional credentials, unimpeachable character, and unwavering dedication to the rule of law,” wrote the White House in a Feb. 25 statement, per Axios. “Judge Jackson is an exceptionally qualified nominee as well as an historic nominee, and the Senate should move forward with a fair and timely hearing and confirmation.”

“What’s remarkable is the background she brings to the bench. Judge Jackson has deep experience across the legal system. She served as a federal public defender, a top lawyer in private practice, a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, and a federal judge,” President Biden said in a video shared to Instagram. “She’s a history maker, the first Black woman ever to be nominated to the Supreme Court, an immensely qualified judge who’s going to make our court stronger and more reflective of our country.”

Here’s everything you need to know about Jackson before she potentially earns a spot on the SCOTUS bench.

Jackson Comes From A Family Of Public Workers

Born in Washington and raised in Miami, Jackson’s parents were both public school teachers in Miami-Dade County before earning promotions; her mother became a principal while her father studied law and scored a spot as the school board’s most-trusted lawyer, per The New York Times. She’s spoken publicly about being a descendent of enslaved people, which is notable as she’s now the second generation of her family to have graduated from college, earning both her undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard. Jackson credits her interest in the legal system to sitting with her father and coloring while he studied law.

While she doesn’t speak about it often, Jackson learned about the United States’ compound legal system as a first-year college student when her uncle Thomas Brown was arrested on a cocaine charge and sentenced to life in prison during the war on drugs in 1980s Miami. Furthermore, two of her other uncles worked as the city’s chief of police and as a sex crimes detective, and her younger brother was a Baltimore police officer working undercover on drug-related crimes.

Jackson’s A Mother & Once Acted Alongside Matt Damon

Jackson’s education history is extensive — and randomly star-studded. She attended Miami Palmetto Senior High School, of which Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is also a former student, where she shined on the speech and debate team (a fitting judicial precursor) and penned a senior yearbook note expressing interest in one day becoming a judge. A successful debate competition earned Jackson an undergraduate spot at Harvard, and while earning her degree, she joined the school’s improv team and acted alongside Matt Damon in a theater course.

She graduated in 1992 and worked a short stint reporting for Time magazine before returning to Harvard for law school. There, she met and began a romantic relationship with a pre-med student named Patrick G. Jackson, who currently works in surgery at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. The pair remained together through her 1996 graduation, got married the same year, and have since welcomed two daughters, Talia and Leila.

Jackson’s Work Includes Clerking For The Justice She Could Replace

Prior to officially becoming a judge, Jackson worked as a clerk for several federal attorneys, including Justice Breyer. While holding her swearing-in ceremony in 2013, Breyer spoke about her background and how it influences her legal work: “She sees things from different points of view, and she sees somebody else’s point of view and understands it.”

During a virtual conference held in 2020, Jackson praised Breyer’s work and noted that his penchant for hiring diverse staff members “opened doors of opportunities” for many individuals. “As a descendent of slaves, let me just say that, Justice [Breyer], your thoughtfulness has made a world of difference,” she said, according to The Guardian.

Jackson’s Fought The Trump Administration & Far-Right Conspiracy Theories

Throughout her career as a judge, Jackson’s worked on many high-profile rulings. Following the rise of the debunked far-right Pizzagate conspiracy theory claiming Hillary Clinton was heading a child sex-trafficking ring out of a DC-based pizza shop, Jackson put a man in prison in 2017 for firing a military-grade rifle in the business, hoping to save the children.

On many occasions, she set out to hold the Trump administration accountable for its actions. In 2018, she issued a highly-publicized opinion against the former president’s executive orders aiming to subvert public employees’ labor protections, though it was later unanimously reversed due to a perceived lack of jurisdiction on the courts’ end. Jackson’s most high-profile ruling came the following year, when she decided former White House counsel Donald F. McGhahn II must testify about Trump’s controversial Russia investigation. “Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded history is that presidents are not kings,” she said in 2019. “They do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control.”

After she was promoted to the appeals court by President Biden in June 2021, Jackson was part of a trio of judges who ruled that Congress must be granted access to White House documents related to the Jan. 6 insurrection within a month of the case being presented.

Jackson’s Received Praise From Both Democrats & Republicans

While much of her work can be associated with left-leaning ideologies, Jackson’s career has been met with compliments from both sides of the political divide. Following Justice Antonin Scalia’s passing in 2016, President Barack Obama interviewed Jackson as a potential SCOTUS nominee. She’s also received praise from former House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, who just so happens to be Jackson’s husband’s brother-in-law. “Now our politics may differ,” Ryan said during her Senate confirmation hearing in 2013, “but my praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, for her integrity, it is unequivocal.”

When Jackson was confirmed into the appeals court last year, she received a 53-to-44 majority vote from all 50 sitting Democrats as well as three Republicans: Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

However, following Jackson’s announcement as Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, Graham switched gears and released a statement condemning the move. “If media reports are accurate, and Judge Jackson has been chosen as the Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Breyer, it means the radical Left has won President Biden over yet again,” wrote Graham, via Twitter. He then continued to express disappointment that his pick, South Carolina Judge Michelle Childs, wasn’t chosen following criticism from Democrats for her work as a corporate lawyer defending “management in cases involving discrimination and labor law violations,” according to Yahoo! News.

Jackson will now undergo the SCOTUS confirmation process, which could take anywhere from less than a month to multiple months.