Role model for young black women
Judge Jackson refines the Supreme Court
04/07/2022, 10:12 p.m
Even as a little girl, she studied law with her father at the kitchen table. Her verdict against Trump is legendary. Ketanji Brown Jackson is now the first black judge to sit on the Supreme Court. She masters the gauntlet in the Senate elegantly and with coolness.
Ketanji Brown Jackson is aware of her historical role. “Since I was nominated for this post, I’ve had so many messages and letters and photos from young girls from all over the country telling me how excited they are about this opportunity,” the US constitutional judge-designate said recently before the Senate . Because the 51-year-old writes history: Jackson is the first black judge ever to enter the Supreme Court. The current federal judge wants to be even more of a role model for black girls who dream of a career in law – and show that in the land of supposedly unlimited opportunities, African American women can actually get to the top.
So far, the Supreme Court has been anything but a brilliant example: in its 233-year history, 108 of the 115 judges were white men. Two black men have made it to the powerful Supreme Court, but one black woman has never.
That will now change: The US Senate has now voted on confirming the successor to the retiring liberal constitutional judge Stephen Breyer, who was nominated by President Joe Biden in February. Despite the extremely narrow majority of Biden’s Democrats in the upper house, Jackson’s vote was considered a formality, and three Republican senators also wanted to vote for her. The confirmation process in the Senate was anything but easy for the graduate of the elite Harvard University, who most recently worked as a judge on the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington.
Campaign stage for Republicans
The opposition Republicans used the Senate hearings as a campaign platform and accused the mother of two daughters, who is married to a surgeon, of having handed down sentences against child pornography offenders that were too lenient as a judge – an accusation quickly refuted by independent fact-checkers. Conservatives have also labeled Jackson a left-wing activist and are trying to drag her into their culture wars over issues of gender, sexuality and racism schooling, with which they hope to vote in November’s midterm congressional elections.
Jackson, however, let the attacks roll off at the hearings with stoic calm. The majority leader of the Senate Democrats, Chuck Schumer, described her performance as a “master class”. “The Republicans wanted to hit the bullseye. But Judge Jackson stayed cool.”
The appointment to the nine-member Supreme Court is the culmination of a brilliant career. Born in Washington and raised in Miami, Jackson was exposed to legal issues as a child when her father – a teacher – was preparing for a law degree and cramming at the kitchen table. The parents grew up in the American south during the time of racial segregation and gave their daughter the African name Ketanji Onyika – “Lovely one” in English.
Supreme Court remains in conservative hands
After her own law studies at Harvard, Jackson worked as an assistant to Stephen Breyer – the very judge she is now to inherit in the Supreme Court. She later worked for a while as a public defender, representing clients who could not afford a lawyer. Among them were inmates of the notorious Guantanamo prison camp.
Jackson became a federal judge in 2013. She probably made her best-known judgment in 2019, when she inflicted a legal defeat on then-President Donald Trump: she ruled that high-ranking government employees had to comply with parliamentary subpoenas, which Trump wanted to prevent. “Presidents are not kings,” Jackson wrote in her verdict. In 2021, the judge was then appointed to the Federal Court of Appeals in Washington.
Her rise to the Supreme Court is a historic moment. However, this will not change the majority of the court: the conservative camp will continue to have a firm grip on the Supreme Court with a majority of six of the nine judges.