WASHINGTON – Ketanji Brown Jackson celebrated her rise “from segregation to the Supreme Court” at a White House event yesterday marking her confirmation as the first black woman appointed to the nation’s highest judicial bench.
In her first public remarks since the Senate endorsed her on Thursday, the 51-year-old judge shared the credit for a milestone that was 232 years in the making, telling her supporters: “We have made it – all of us.”
“In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States,” she told around 150 guests invited to the South Lawn by President Joe Biden.
“And it is an honour, the honour of a lifetime, for me to have this chance to join the court.”
Jackson came out of the White House with Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris to cheers from the new justice’s family, current and former Supreme Court justices, administration officials and senators who voted for her.
“It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a black woman to be appointed to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, but we have made it – all of us,” she said.
“And our children are telling me that they see now more than ever that, here in America, anything is possible.”
Jackson was green-lit by the Senate in a 53-47 vote that capped a bruising confirmation battle, with just three Republicans joining Democrats in advancing Biden’s vision for a more diverse high court.
She was also with the president at the White House to watch the vote on Thursday, with the pair embracing as she was confirmed.
Introducing his first pick to the court, in front of a sun-drenched South Portico decked in US flags, Biden vowed future generations would be “proud of what we did” in choosing Jackson.
“This is going to let so much sunshine on so many young women, so many young Black men, so many minorities – it’s real,” the Democratic president said.
“We’re going to look back and see this is a moment of real change in American history.”
Harris, who presided over the confirmation hearing, has broken down barriers of her own as the first woman and first black and Asian-American to be vice-president.
“President George Washington once referred to America as a great experiment, a nation founded on the previously untested belief that the people – we, the people – could form a more perfect union,” Harris said.
“And that belief has pushed our nation forward for generations and it is that belief that we reaffirmed yesterday through the confirmation of the first black woman to the United States Supreme Court.”
One Democrat-backed justice replacing another – the retiring Stephen Breyer – will not change the ideological balance of the court, which has a 6-3 conservative edge.
But it will be the first time the bench has included four women, with Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan nominated by Barack Obama and Amy Coney Barrett picked by Donald Trump.
Jackson will be the sixth woman in total to be elevated to the Supreme Court. Her confirmation comes 55 years after Thurgood Marshall became the first black justice.
Clarence Thomas, who assumed office in 1991, is the only other African-American to have served on the bench. – AFP, April 9, 2022
