Nearly a month after Justice Stephen Breyer announced that he would soon retire from the U.S. Supreme Court, after which President Biden vowed to nominate the first Black woman to the Court, we have an official nominee. On Feb. 25, the President nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, to take the seat which will be left vacant by Justice Breyer at the end of the current SCOTUS term. If her nomination is confirmed by the Senate, Judge Jackson would be the first ever Black woman to hold a seat on the highest court in the land.

The daughter of schoolteachers, Jackson was raised in Miami, Florida. She developed an interest in the law during her childhood while her father was going to law school. Her family has been on both sides of law enforcement: one of her uncles was sentenced to life imprisonment for possession of cocaine in the late 80s (stemming out of the "war on drugs"), while two other uncles and her brother worked as police officers.

A star student in high school, Jackson obtained both her undergraduate and law degree from Harvard. Following law school, and perhaps not coincidentally, she clerked for Justice Breyer at the Supreme Court from 1999 to 2000. She now serves as a Judge at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit—regarded by many as the second most influential court in the country after the Supreme Court.

Judge Jackson As A Public Defender

Jackson worked as a federal public defender in D.C. from 2005 to 2007, arguing before federal appellate...

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