Who is Ketanji Brown Jackson, newest member to the Supreme Court?
US Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first black woman and first former federal public defender confirmed to the Supreme Court on Thursday, after hours of intense confirmation hearings and debate in the Senate.
Jackson, 51, was confirmed by a 53-47 vote with three Republican senators – Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah – voting with all 50 Democrats.
President Biden announced Jackson as his nominee to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer in February. She will be sworn into office after he retires later this year and will join the Supreme Court at the start of its next term in October.
Jackson’s confirmation process largely focused on her personal beliefs and professional career as a judge. Over the more than 20 hours of questioning, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee repeatedly pressed Jackson on the sentences she doled out in child porngraphy cases – which they claimed were overly lenient.
Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina were among those who closely questioned the judge over a handful of cases in which Jackson gave offenders penalties well below recommendations by prosecutors and probation officers. All three voted against her confirmation.
The Republican committee members were later reprimanded for their behavior during the hearings by Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and other members of the Senate, including moderate Joe Manchin (D-WV).
Jackson did not receive any Republican support from the Judiciary Committee – resulting in the first tied vote on a Supreme Court nomination since Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991.
Born in Washington, DC, Jackson grew up in Miami and went to college at Harvard. After graduating in 1992, she briefly worked at Time magazine as a reporter and researcher before returning to Harvard to pursue a law degree.
Since graduating from Harvard Law in 1996, Jackson has held numerous jobs in the legal field. She has clerked for three federal jurists — including Breyer — and worked as an assistant federal public defender in Washington, DC, between 2005 and 2007. During this period, according to Politico, Jackson represented Afghan terror suspect Khi Ali Gul, who was held at Guantanamo Bay for more than a decade before being repatriated to Afghanistan in 2014 by the Obama administration.
Ahead of her confirmation, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) blasted the judge for representing the terror suspect, accusing Jackson of having an interest in “helping terrorists” and went as far to say that she would consider defending Nazis.
In 2012, President Barack Obama nominated Jackson to become a DC district judge and she was confirmed by the Senate in early 2013.
While serving on the district court, Jackson sentenced Edgar Maddison Welch to four year in prison for opening fire in a busy DC pizzeria while “investigating” “Pizzagate” — a bizarre conspiracy theory that claimed Hillary Clinton was behind a child sex ring.
In her 2017 ruling, Jackson said Welch’s actions “literally left psychological wreckage.”
Two years later, Jackson also ruled that former White House counsel Don McGahn must testify at a congressional hearing that led to then-President Donald Trump’s first impeachment by the House of Representatives. However, Jackson’s decision was later overturned by a federal appeals court.
In early 2021, Biden nominated Jackson to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to replace Attorney General Merrick Garland. As on Thursday, she received three Republican votes supporting her confirmation in June.
In January of this year, Jackson was among three judges who ruled against Trump in his bid to withhold documents from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol.
Jackson will not need any GOP support to be confirmed later this year. However, she did receive three Republican votes last year when she was confirmed to the appeals court.
Jackson is the fourth current Supreme Court justice to be elevated from the DC Circuit, joining Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Thomas. Other DC Circuit alums who have served on the Supreme Court include the late Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as well as former Chief Justice Warren Burger.
Jackson has two daughters with husband Patrick Jackson, the chief of general surgery at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington. She is related to former House Speaker Paul Ryan through marriage. Jackson’s husband is the twin brother of Ryan’s brother-in-law.
During Jackson’s confirmation for the district court judgeship in 2012, Ryan touted his support for his distant relative.
“Our politics may differ, but my praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, for her integrity is unequivocal,” Ryan said at the time. “She’s an amazing person, and I favorably recommend her consideration.”
