Atty. Julius Gregory Delgado
KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: FIRST BLACK WOMAN TO SIT IN THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT
On 07 April 2022, the United States Senate, by a vote of 53-47, confirmed Kentanji Onyika Brown Jackson as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court succeeding Justice Stephen Breyer to whom she worked as a Clerk of Court. Justice Jackson was nominated by President Joe Biden on 25 February 2022 after Justice Breyer announced his retirement on 27 January 2022. Justice Jackson’s elevation as magistrate of the 9-member United States Supreme Court makes her as the first black woman and the third African-American magistrate (after late Justice Thurgood Marshall and incumbent Justice Clarence Thomas) of the United States Supreme Court.
Justice Jackson was born on 14 September 1970 in Washington, D.C. to Johnny Brown, a lawyer, and Ellery Jackson, a school principal. Justice Jackson grew up in Miami Florida area where she graduated from Miami Palmetto Senior High School. She attended Harvard University and graduated A.B. magna cum laude having written a senior thesis entitled “The Hand of Oppression: Plea Bargaining Processes and the Coercion of Criminal Defendants”. She then studied law at Harvard Law School where she was supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review. Justice Jackson eventually obtained her Juris Doctor degree graduating cum laude.
After law school, she was a law clerk to a judge at the U.S. District Court for District of Massachusetts from 1996-1997, then to judge Bruce M. Selva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit from 1997-1998. She spent a year in private practice in the Washington D.C. law firm Miller Cassidy Larroca & Lewin before doing clerkship with Justice Breyer from 1999-2000. From 2000-2003, she worked at the Boston-based law firm Goodwin Procter from 2000-2002, then with Kenneth Feinberg from 2002-2003. From 2003-2005, Justice Jackson was assistant special counsel to the United States Sentencing Commission and worked as assistant federal public defender from 2005-2007. From 2007-2010, she was an appellate specialist at Morrison & Foerster. On 23 July 2009, former President Barrack Obama nominated Justice Jackson to be the Vice Chair of the United States Sentencing Commission serving until 2014. On 20 September 2012, former President Obama nominated her as judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia where she was confirmed by a bipartisan vote. On 30 March 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Justice Jackson to serve as a United States circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
With the confirmation of Justice Jackson, she now joins Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Along with Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, there are three magistrates appointed by a President from a Democratic Party.
Justice Jackson is married to surgeon Patrick Graves Jackson and the couple has two children, Leila and Talia. Justice Jackson is a non-denominational Protestant.