Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed to the Supreme Court on Thursday by the U.S. Senate and will become the first Black female justice in the institution’s 233-year history.
Jackson watched the confirmation vote with President Joe Biden at the White House. She will be sworn in later this summer, following the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer, who said he’ll step down following the current Supreme Court term.
Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the 53-47 vote on Thursday. Three Republican Senators – Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – joined all fifty Democrats in the upper chamber to elevate the 51-year-old Jackson, who will be just the sixth woman to serve on the Supreme Court.
Jackson will join two of those women, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, as the liberal foils to the conservative majority. Once Jackson takes her seat on the nation’s highest bench, white men will not make up the majority of Supreme Justices for the first time ever. Jackson is also part of a relative youth movement. Once Breyer retires, no justice will be over 75, “the first time that has happened in nearly 30 years,” notes The Associated Press.
Jackson’s confirmation is a “major achievement” for Biden, writes The New York Times, noting that he “promised at a low point in his 2020 primary campaign that he would appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court at his first opportunity. As a former public defender, Judge Jackson is the leading example of the emphasis the administration has put on expanding not only the personal diversity of the courts, but the professional as well. She will be the first-ever public defender to become a high court justice.”
The Washington Post adds:
Even though Jackson would join the court as it starts its summer recess, she would likely move quickly to organize her chambers and hire personnel. She would be called upon before the start of next fall’s term to decide emergency petitions, an increasing part of the court’s workload.
The justices meet in September to sort through hundreds or thousands of petitions and select the cases they will hear. Although an official investiture ceremony might come earlier, Jackson would take the bench for official duty on the first day of the court’s new term, Oct. 3.
