Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the US supreme court has passed the Senate and she will now become the first Black female justice on America’s highest legal body after being nominated by Joe Biden earlier this year.
Jackson’s nomination has been widely praised by women of color, especially after she sustained grueling confirmation hearings at the hands of some top Republicans who seemed dedicated to political points-scoring and whose criticisms often seemed like racist dog-whistling.
Here are four women of color talking about Jackson and the significance of her nomination:
Kamala Harris, US vice-president
“I’ll tell you what I think you know. Judge Jackson is a phenomenal jurist,” Harris said last month in Selma, Alabama, during the 57th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday”.
Jackson “proves her commitment not only to public service but to equal justice and equal rights”, Harris added.
“As she makes history, Judge Jackson, like us all, stands on the shoulders of giants. She and we are their legacy.”
Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center
“The world demands untold levels of strength from Black women on a daily basis. The perseverance Jackson held close is all too familiar to Black women across this country,” Graves wrote in a CNN op-ed last month during Jackson’s confirmation hearings.
“We hailed her career and celebrated not only her, but also the work of countless Black women silenced, erased and excluded from the top echelon of the legal profession,” she said, adding: “This will be the legacy of her rise to the supreme court: a young Black girl, one of a generation of Black girls, joyful at the sight of new possibilities for her own life.”
Ann Claire Williams, retired US circuit judge of the US court of appeals for the 7th circuit
In a statement on behalf of the American Bar Association’s standing committee on the federal judiciary, Williams wrote: “Judge Jackson has a sterling reputation for integrity. Judges and lawyers who have known her in every capacity uniformly praised her character, calling her integrity ‘beyond reproach’, ‘first rate’, and ‘impeccable’.”
“Our extensive review leads us to conclude that Judge Jackson meets the highest standards of integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament,” Williams continued, granting Jackson the ABA’s highest rating.
Angela Onwuachi-Willig, dean of Boston University School of Law
“We don’t only get judged by our actions as individuals, all Black people get judged by our actions,” Onwuachi-Willig said in reference to Jackson’s confirmation hearings. “That’s an enormous weight. Judge Jackson was carrying that weight for hours and hours and hours, and I felt that was a human moment.”
“With nearly 10 years of service as a federal judge, experience clerking for Supreme court justice Stephen Breyer and two lower-court judges, and a record of leadership on the United States Sentencing Commission, she will make an incredible supreme court justice,” Onwuachi-Willig also said in a letter, along with more than 200 other Black women law deans and professors, that urged the Senate’s confirmation of Jackson.
• The subheading of this article was amended on 8 April 2022 to correct the spelling of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s first name.
