WASHINGTON | President Joe Biden on Friday will nominate federal appeals court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, the White House said, making her the first Black woman selected to serve on a court that once declared her race unworthy of citizenship and endorsed segregation.
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In Jackson, Biden delivers on a campaign promise to make the historic appointment and to further diversify a court that was made up entirely of white men for almost two centuries. He has chosen an attorney who would be the high court’s first former public defender, though she also possesses the elite legal background of other justices.
Jackson would be the current court’s second Black justice — Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative, is the other — and just the third in history.
Biden planned to introduce Jackson in remarks at the White House Friday afternoon, where Jackson was also expected to speak, the White House said.
She would also be only the sixth woman to serve on the court, and her confirmation would mean that for the first time four women would sit together on the nine-member court.
The current court includes three women, one of whom is the court’s first Latina, Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Jackson would join the liberal minority of a conservative-dominated court that is weighing cutbacks to abortion rights and will be considering ending affirmative action in college admissions and restricting voting rights efforts to increase minority representation.
Biden is filling the seat that will be vacated by Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, who is retiring at the end of the term this summer.
Jackson, 51, once worked as one of Breyer’s law clerks early in her legal career. She attended Harvard as an undergraduate and for law school, and served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the agency that develops federal sentencing policy, before becoming a federal judge in 2013.
Her nomination is subject to confirmation by the Senate, where Democrats hold the majority by a razor-thin 50-50 margin with Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaker. Party leaders have promised swift but deliberate consideration of the president’s nominee.
The next justice will replace one of the more liberal justices, so she would not tip the balance of the court, which now leans 6-3 in favor of conservatives.
The news comes two years to the day after Biden, then struggling to capture the Democratic presidential nomination, first pledged in a South Carolina debate to nominate a Black woman to the high court if presented with a vacancy.
“Everyone should be represented,” Biden said. “We talked about the Supreme Court — I’m looking forward to making sure there’s a Black woman on the Supreme Court to make sure we in fact get everyone represented.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin said in a statement that the panel will “begin immediately” to move forward on the nomination and that Jackson is an “extraordinary nominee.” Senators have set a tentative goal of confirmation by April 8, when they leave for a two-week spring recess. Hearings could start as soon as mid-March.
That timeline could be complicated by a number of things, including the ongoing developments between Russia and Ukraine and the extended absence of Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, who suffered a stroke last month and is out for several weeks. Democrats would need Lujan’s vote to confirm Biden’s pick if no Republicans support her.
Once the nomination is sent to the Senate, it is up to the Senate Judiciary Committee to vet the nominee and hold confirmation hearings. After the committee approves a nomination, it goes to the Senate floor for a final vote.
The entire process passes through several time-consuming steps, including meetings with individual senators that are expected to begin next week. While Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed just four weeks after she was nominated ahead of the 2020 election, the process usually takes several weeks longer than that.
Biden and Senate Democrats are hoping for a bipartisan vote on the nomination, but it’s unclear if they will be able to win over any GOP senators after three bitterly partisan confirmation battles under President Donald Trump. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of three Republicans who voted to confirm Jackson to the appeals court last year, had pushed Biden to nominate a different candidate from his home state, Judge J. Michelle Childs. He said earlier this month that his vote would be “very problematic” if it were anyone else, and he expressed disappointment in a tweet Friday that Biden had not nominated his preferred choice.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said he looks forward to meeting with Jackson and “studying her record, legal views, and judicial philosophy.” But he also appeared to express skepticism, noting he voted against her a year ago.
Jackson was on the president’s short list as a potential nominee even before Breyer retired. Biden and his team spent weeks poring over her records, interviewing her friends and family and looking into her background.
Biden has said he was interested in selecting a nominee in the mold of Breyer who could be a persuasive force with fellow justices. Although Breyer’s votes tended to put him to the left of center on an increasingly conservative court, he frequently saw the gray in situations that colleagues were more likely to find black or white.
“With her exceptional qualifications and record of evenhandedness, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will be a Justice who will uphold the Constitution and protect the rights of all Americans, including the voiceless and vulnerable,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “The historic nomination of Judge Jackson is an important step toward ensuring the Supreme Court reflects the nation as a whole.”
As part of his search process, Biden, a longtime chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also interviewed Childs and California Supreme Court Judge Leondra Kruger, according to a person familiar with the matter. He also consulted with a wide range of legal experts and lawmakers in both parties and delved deeply into the finalists’ legal writings before selecting Jackson for the post.
Jackson serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a position that Biden elevated her to last year from her previous job as a federal trial court judge. Three current justices — Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts, the chief justice — previously served on the same court.
On Friday morning ahead of the announcement, Jackson took part in scheduled arguments before the circuit court.
Jackson was confirmed to that post on a 53-44 Senate vote, winning the backing of three Republicans: Graham, Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.
Graham, in a tweet, indicated displeasure with the nomination, saying, “I expect a respectful but interesting hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee.”
Bipartisanship is important to Biden, who has often said he was reaching for GOP support as he closed in on a nominee. Another GOP connection: Jackson is related by marriage to former House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.
In one of Jackson’s most high-profile decisions, as a trial court judge she ordered former White House Counsel Don McGahn to appear before Congress. That was a setback to former President Donald Trump’s efforts to keep his top aides from testifying. The case was appealed, and a deal was ultimately reached for McGahn’s testimony.
Another highly visible case that Jackson oversaw involved the online conspiracy theory “pizzagate,” which revolved around false internet rumors about prominent Democrats harboring child sex slaves at a Washington pizza restaurant. A North Carolina man showed up at the restaurant with an assault rifle and a revolver. Jackson called it “sheer luck” no one was injured and sentenced him to four years in prison.
Jackson has a considerably shorter record as an appeals court judge. She was part of a three-judge panel that ruled in December against Trump’s effort to shield documents from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Miami. She has said that her parents, Johnny and Ellery Brown, chose her name to express their pride in her family’s African ancestry. They asked an aunt who was in the Peace Corps in Africa at the time to send a list of African girls’ names and they picked Ketanji Onyika, which they were told meant “lovely one.”
Jackson traces her interest in the law to when she was in preschool and her father was in law school and they would sit together at the dining room table, she with coloring books and he with law books. Her father became an attorney for the county school board and her mom was a high school principal. She has a brother who is nine years younger who served in the Army, including in Iraq, and is now a lawyer.
When Ketanji Brown Jackson’s younger daughter was 11, she drafted a letter to the president suggesting her federal judge-mom for a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
“Dear Mr. President,” Leila Jackson wrote. “She’s determined, honest and never breaks a promise to anyone even if there are other things she’d rather do. She can demonstrate commitment and is loyal and never brags. I think she would make a great Supreme Court justice.”
Jackson wasn’t nominated for the vacancy her daughter was writing about, one created by the 2016 death of Justice Antonin Scalia. And Republican lawmakers blocked then-President Barack Obama’s ultimate nominee, Merrick Garland, who is now President Joe Biden’s attorney general.
Now, Jackson might have another shot.
Jackson talked about her daughter’s letter in a 2017 speech. She said the letter came about after her daughter learned there was a high court opening and thought her mom should apply.
“Getting to be on the Supreme Court isn’t really the kind of job that you apply for,” she and her husband explained to their daughter.
Still, a little bragging doesn’t hurt.
Jackson has a background similar to justices on the court and had attracted Obama’s attention as a possible nominee in 2016. She went to college and law school at Harvard. She also spent a year early in her career serving as a law clerk to Breyer.
Her experience as a public defender could set her apart, especially because Biden has prized criminal defense and civil rights work in other people he has nominated for federal judgeships.
Jackson is on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a position Biden elevated her to last year from her previous job as a federal trial court judge. Three current justices — Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas and John Roberts, the chief justice — previously served on the same appeals court.
Jackson was confirmed to the appeals court by a 53-44 vote, winning the backing of three Republicans: South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski. That could be important to Biden, who has been reaching out for GOP support as he chooses a nominee. Another GOP connection: Jackson is related by marriage to former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., but grew up in Miami. She has said that her parents, Johnny and Ellery Brown, chose her name to express their pride in her family’s African ancestry. They asked an aunt who was in the Peace Corps in Africa at the time to send a list of African girl’s names and they picked Ketanji Onyika, which they were told meant “lovely one.”
She traces her interest in the law to when she was in preschool and her father was in law school and they would sit together at the dining room table, she with coloring books and he with law books. Her father became an attorney for the county school board and her mom was a high school principal. She has a brother who is nine years younger who served in the Army, including in Iraq, and is now a lawyer.
In high school, she was the president of her public high school class and a debate champion. Richard B. Rosenthal, a lawyer who has known her since junior high, said there was no question she would rise to the top of whatever field she chose, describing her as “destined for greatness.” His older brother, Stephen F. Rosenthal, a classmate and friend from Miami who also went to college and law school with her, called her a “natural leader” and someone with “penetrating intelligence.”
At Harvard she studied government but also was involved in drama and musical theater and part of an improv group called On Thin Ice. At one point she was assigned actor Matt Damon as a drama class partner, she has said, acknowledging he probably wouldn’t remember her. He does not, Damon confirmed through a representative, but added: “That’s so cool!”
Also at Harvard she met her husband, Patrick Jackson. The couple has two daughters, the letter-writer Leila, who is in high school, and her older sister, Talia, who is in college.
Patrick Jackson, a surgeon, has a Twitter account that sticks almost exclusively to medicine. But on June 12 in a tweet that has since apparently been removed he posted to note an important legal date. It was the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Loving v. Virginia decision that struck down interracial marriage bans. “Happy Loving Day! I am especially thankful to be walking through life with a brilliant and compassionate partner who still takes my breath away, made possible by sacrifices like Richard and Mildred Loving,” Jackson wrote, adding a photo of himself and his wife.
The two married in 1996. From 1999 to 2000, Jackson was as a law clerk to Breyer on the Supreme Court.
Deborah Pearlstein, a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens the same year Jackson worked for Breyer, recalled Jackson as funny, insightful and “incredibly good at her job.”
“I don’t know anybody there at the time who didn’t get along with Ketanji,” Pearlstein said.
Over the course of her career since, Jackson has worked for large law firms but also was a public defender. After she was nominated to serve on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the agency that develops federal sentencing policy, she taught herself to knit to deal with the stress of the nomination and confirmation process, she has said. As a commissioner, she was part of a unanimous vote to allow thousands of people already in federal prison for crack-related crimes get their sentences reduced as a result of a new law.
Prison isn’t a distant concept for Jackson. Her uncle was serving a life sentence for a drug-related crime until it was commuted by Obama, according to a detailed account in The Washington Post.
Jackson’s work on the Sentencing Commission paved the way for her to become a federal judge, where one of the things she displayed in her office was a copy of a famous, handwritten petition to the Supreme Court from a Florida prisoner, Clarence Gideon. The Supreme Court took his case and issued a landmark decision guaranteeing a lawyer for criminal defendants who are too poor to afford one.
In one of her most high-profile decisions, she ordered former White House counsel Don McGahn to appear before Congress. It was a setback to former President Donald Trump’s effort to keep his top aides from testifying. The case was appealed and a deal was ultimately reached for McGahn’s testimony.
Another highly visible case Jackson oversaw involved the online conspiracy theory “pizzagate,” unfounded internet rumors about prominent Democrats harboring child sex slaves at a Washington pizza restaurant. A North Carolina man showed up at the restaurant with an AR-15 assault rifle and a revolver. Jackson called it “sheer luck” no one was injured and sentenced him to four years in prison.
Jackson has a considerably shorter record as an appeals court judge.
Her first opinion, written for a unanimous three-judge panel in favor of labor unions, came out in recent days. In earlier votes she joined colleagues in declining to stop the Biden administration from enforcing a freeze on evictions put in place during the coronavirus pandemic and ruled against an effort by Trump to shield documents from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Those decisions were appealed to the Supreme Court and the justices allowed evictions to resume, but also allowed the documents’ release.
As far as the current Supreme Court opening, in addition to the endorsement of her daughter, Jackson has also had the endorsement of the man she would replace. When officials called Breyer in the course of her original nomination to be a federal judge, Breyer reportedly picked up the phone and started the conversation with two words: “Hire her.”
Now let’s see how long it takes to confirm her. I suspect a lot longer than it took for any of the previous guy’s nominees.