History is Made: Ketanji Brown Jackson
Ketanji Brown Jackson is an American attorney and jurist who has served as a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2021. She is a current nominee for the Supreme Court, and has just received Senate confirmation.
Current president of the United States, Joe Biden, chose specifically her as a nominee for the Supreme Court due to her “exceptional credentials, unimpeachable character, and an unwavering dedication to the rule of law”.
Choosing such an incredible woman to be in the US Supreme Court and to have such an important role would also be a historical move given that Ketanji is the first ever Black woman in the Supreme Court.
After graduating Harvard Law School and Harvard College, Ketanji worked in multiple places and in each and every one of them she managed to do everything in her power to help the ones in need. By also being a woman of color and a representative of the American constitution she had every good intention a human could have, to make the country a better place in the smaller ways that she could, even if it meant only helping a minority of people from smaller areas.
Jackson worked in private practice and in the appeals division of the Office of the Federal Public Defender in the District of Columbia. She told a Senate committee hearing last year that her work as a public defender was “an opportunity to help people in need, and to promote core constitutional values”.
Jackson wrote nearly 600 opinions in her years as a judge for the US District Court and DC Circuit Appeals Court, according to the Alliance for Justice, an advocacy group that published a fact sheet last year on her track record. Those opinions were reversed or vacated only 14 times, the group said.
Among other posts, she also worked at the US Sentencing Commission.
There she proposed and reviewed amendments to federal sentencing policies and “demonstrated a consistent concern about the fundamental fairness of the proposed amendments and the evenhanded treatment of individuals convicted of a crime”, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund said in a report on her legal record.
Confirmed to the Supreme Court, Judge Jackson also says that she hopes she could be an inspiration for the young people who want to pursue in this field of study and wishes to give them an example to look up to just as she used to look up to some law pursuers when she was little, especially the African American ones, “like her”, she mentioned in an interview.
She did so much for the American society and culture and this US Supreme Court nomination and acceptance is a step forward and a statement not only in her career, but in American history.
As much as she helped thousands of cases while working on different branches as a judge or assistant, the quantity of people getting help from her will double from her post in the Supreme Court.
A great heart and a professional.
