K  etanji Brown Jackson (1970 -) is the first black woman and the first former public defender to sit on the United States Supreme Court. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the 116th Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court on April 7, 2022.

Jackson was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Miami, Florida. Her parents were public school teachers and administrators, and it was her father’s work to earn a law degree while she was a child that sparked Jackson’s love of the law. She also has a brother and two uncles who were in law enforcement. Jackson excelled in school and was a leader in student government. After graduating magna cum laude from both Harvard University and Harvard Law School, she clerked for two judges—Justice Patti B. Saris of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts (1996-1997) and Justice Bruce M. Selva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (1997-1998). During the next two years, Jackson worked for a private practice law firm in Washington, D.C. followed by a clerkship for Justice Stephen Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court (1999-2000)—the Justice whose retirement in 2022 opened the opportunity for Jackson’s nomination.

From 2000 to 2003, she returned to private practice and was the assistant special counsel to the United States Sentencing Commission. In 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Jackson to the Commission’s vice chair position where she won unanimous consent by the U.S. Congress in 2010. Jackson served there for the next four years and was instrumental in amending the sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine and enacted the “drugs minus two” amendment. Prior to her time with the Commission, Jackson was an Assistant Federal Public Defender in the appeals division in the Office of the Federal Public Defender in the District of Columbia. Following that position, she focused on criminal and civil appellate litigation at the state and federal levels in private practice where she also worked on cases in the Supreme Court of the United States.

In 2012, President Obama nominated Jackson to serve as a judge for the U.S. District of Columbia where she was sworn in by Justice Breyer in May 2013. During the Trump Administration, Judge Jackson wrote multiple decisions adverse to the administration’s position, once stating, “presidents are not kings.”

In 2021, Judge Jackson was nominated by President Joseph Biden to serve as a U.S. Circuit Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and was sworn in to that position in June 2021. Prior to becoming a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Judge Jackson served as a member of the Judicial Conference Committee on Defender Services, as well as on the Board of Overseers of Harvard University and the Council of the American Law Institute.

Biography provided by the National Women’s Hall of Fame