Ketanji Brown Jackson, the US Supreme Court’s newest justice, is both the first Black woman and the first former federal public defender to hold the position. She was formally welcomed to the court with an investiture ceremony in September.
Jackson is the first Black woman in history to sit on the Supreme Court. Of the 116 justices that have sat on the Supreme Court, all but eight have been white men, according to the Supreme Court’s public records.
Jackson is only the third Black justice in US history, after Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas. Marshall retired in 1991 and was replaced by Thomas, who currently holds the seat. This marks the first time that the court will have more than one Black justice in active service.
“It is historic that Judge Jackson was appointed to the Supreme Court as the first Black woman, in what has mostly been a male-dominated court,” Friday Otuya, a UW graduate student, said. “I think our leadership as a country should reflect the diversity of our people.”
Otuya went on to discuss the long history of legal discrimination in America.
“While Judge Jackson was the first Black female judge, Black women throughout the history of the US have always had the ability to be Supreme Court judges, they were just never given the opportunity. So I think it’s an issue of a mindset that needs to change,” Otuya said. “Black women can do any job as well as men can, and the fact that they are appointed to do those jobs should be the norm, not the exception.”
This is the highwater mark for the number of women serving on the Supreme Court. Four of the six total female SCOTUS justices in history currently sit on the bench – Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, Amy Coney Barret, and now Jackson.
Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the other two women who have served as justices, are no longer active members. O’Connor retired in 2006, and Ginsburg passed away in 2020.
Jackson is also the first federal public defender to sit on the Supreme Court. Public defenders are lawyers appointed to represent people who cannot afford to hire their own lawyer.
The right to a lawyer even if you cannot afford one is guaranteed in the United States by the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Lauren McLane, UW Professor of Law and Director of the Defender Aid Clinic, believes that Jackson will make two clear contributions to the court as a result of her time as a public defender.
“First, she will bring humanity to the bench. Unlike prosecutors, public defenders represent an actual client, a human being,” McLane said.
“Justice Jackson has that experience, which she will now bring to interpreting laws and the Constitution. In this way, she will also further humanize the Supreme Court, the conservative majority of which is currently under scrutiny for being detached from reality and humanity.”
The second contribution is strategy.
“Public defenders often find themselves with their “backs up against the wall,” with little resources against a well-oiled machine that is the government. Public defenders have to be hardcore strategists to advocate for their clients in dire circumstances,” McLane said.
McLane pointed to a recent case as evidence of both of these contributions. In recent oral arguments over how to interpret the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Jackson invoked history to discuss the Fourteenth Amendment and the intention of its framers for it to be race-conscious.
As a supreme court justice, Jackson will serve for a lifetime appointment.
