By Seyi Odewale
Last week’s endorsement of Ms Ketanji Brown-Jackson as the first female jurist of the US Supreme Court by the United States (US) Senate was a fulfilment of President Joe Biden’s campaign promise to put a black woman on the bench of the US apex court.

To many, it was somewhat the breaking of a ‘jinx’, as it were, as no black female jurist had sat on the exalted nine-member bench of the US apex court, dominated by the white since its establishment some 233 years ago.

Jackson’s endorsement was the second time a black appointee would be granted a seat on the bench of the court. She is the first Supreme Court justice since Thurgood Marshall – the first black Supreme Court justice – to have a career experience representing criminal defendants.

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Her endorsement made the majority leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer, exclaim by calling the day a “joyous day” for the US. Three Republicans had to cross the aisle to seal the appointment of a liberal democrat touted as an experienced public defender.

Her fate was decided by a vote of the full 100-member Senate, and she won by a vote of 53 to 47, swaying three republicans to her side to replace the liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, who is due for retirement at the end of the court term in June this year.

The appointment and endorsement of Ms Jackson, 51, to replace Justice Breyer, a fellow liberal judge, whom she once worked for as a clerk, will likely see her on the bench for decades and will not in a long while shift the ideological balance of the current court. The nine-man bench has a ratio of six to three with the conservatives in the majority.

While being grilled by the Senate, Ms Jackson, in one of her responses as to not ‘rocking’ the system, said she has a “methodology” to deciding cases but not an overarching philosophy. She even agreed with the Republican senators on the importance of upholding the letters and spirit of the US Constitution, as it was intended by the founders.

Jackson, a Washington DC native, sits on the influential US Court of Appeals for the DC circuit, which she will vacate in June to assume her position at the US Supreme Court. No doubt, her academic qualifications and wealth of experience put her in good stead to clinch the most revered bench in the US judiciary.

She has two degrees from Harvard University, and she once served as editor of the Harvard Law Review. She worked as a public defender in Washington before joining a private practice before her judicial appointments.

Born some 51 years ago in Washington, D.C., and raised in Miami, Florida, Ms Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson attended Harvard University for her college and law degree programme. While there, she was the Editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

She started her career serving as a clerk for three law firms, one of which was with the US Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, who she will replace at the apex court in June.

Before her elevation to the appellate court in 2013, she had served as a District judge, with her jurisdiction covering Columbia. She was also a vice-chair of the US Sentencing Commission from 2010 to 2014.

As someone born with jurisprudence blood running in the family veins, her father, Johnny Brown, was a lawyer who ultimately became the chief attorney for the Miami-Dade County School Board, while her mother was a school principal at the New World School of the Arts.

While at the college, Ms Jackson’s uncle, Thomas Brown Jr, was sentenced to life imprisonment for a nonviolent cocaine conviction. However, years later, she persuaded a law firm to take her uncle’s case pro bono to ask for amnesty, which made former President Barack Obama commuted the sentence. Another uncle of hers served as Miami’s police chief

She grew up in the Miami, Florida area and graduated from Miami Palmetto Senior High School in 1988. While in secondary school, she won the national oratory title at the National Catholic Forensic League championship in New Orleans.

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She was quoted to have said in her school yearbook as saying she wanted to go into law and have a judicial appointment. Going by this revelation, she seemed to live her dreams and aspirations.

On September 20, 2012, former President Obama nominated Ms Jackson to serve as a judge for the US District of Columbia to fill the vacancy created by the retiring Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. She was introduced in December 2021 at her confirmation hearing by Republican Paul Ryan, a relative by marriage, but with a different political conviction. Ryan said: “Our politics may differ, but my praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, for her integrity, it is unequivocal”

While at the District Court, she wrote some damning decisions that were averse to former President Donald Trump’s administration. In one of her decisions, she ordered the former president’s counsel, Donald McGahn to comply with a legislative subpoena, saying: “Presidents are not kings.” Her stance on some executive agencies’ actions raised questions of administrative law, while some of her rulings attracted political attention.

Perhaps, all these actions brought about the near apathy displayed by the majority of the Republican senators, who voted against her at her confirmation at the US Senate last week. However, three of the distinguished senators voted against their party’s and colleagues’ stand and endorsed Jackson making the vote 53 for and 47 against.

Some of the Republican senators had issues with the kind of clients Ms Jackson had as a public defence lawyer. To them, she was passionate about defending terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, while others faulted her for being soft on crime.

However, many applauded the diversity of experience her legal career would bring to the bench throughout what was at times highly fractious and almost entirely polarised six-week confirmation process.

According to Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of three Republicans who voted in favour of Justice Jackson, the decision rested, in part, as a “rejection of the corrosive politicisation” that has come to shape the confirmation process.

She said the new justice “will bring to the Supreme Court a range of experience from the courtroom that few can match given her background in litigation”.

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The top court plays a crucial role in American public life and is often the last word on highly contentious laws and disputes between states and the federal government.

In early 2016, the Obama administration officials vetted her as a potential nominee for the apex court to fill a seat made vacant by the demise of Antonin Scalia. She was one of the five candidates interviewed for the seat.

Earlier in the year, there were media speculations that President Biden’s administration would nominate her, and her nomination was further supported by the civil rights and liberal advocacy organisations.

A US newspaper of repute, The Washington Post, wrote that her experience as a public defender “has endeared her to the more liberal base of the Democratic Party”.

She is married to surgeon Patrick Graves Jackson, a descendant of Continental Congress delegate Jonathan Jackson, and related to US Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. She is also related, by marriage, to former Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. She has two daughters, Lella and Talia and she is a non-denominational protestant.