Who is Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson?

Choose Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, is showing earlier than the Senate Judiciary Committee this week after being nominated by President Biden to switch Justice Stephen Breyer, who introduced his retirement earlier this 12 months.

Schooling

A lot of Choose Jackson’s early profession was knowledgeable by experiences as a scholar at Harvard College and Harvard Legislation College, the place she confronted questions of race and identification inside essentially the most elite circles of upper schooling. She earned her legislation diploma in 1996.

Skilled historical past

After commencement, she held three clerkships with federal judges, together with in 1999 as a clerk to Justice Breyer, who she is now into account to succeed greater than 20 years later.

From 2005-2007 she additionally labored as a federal public defender, a job during which she helped Khi Ali Gul, an Afghan detainee held at Guantánamo Bay, petition for his launch. If confirmed, Choose Jackson could be the trendy courtroom’s first justice with expertise as a public defender.

Choose Ketanji Brown Jackson has spent a lot of her profession in Washington, serving as a choose within the U.S. District Court docket for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2013 to 2021, and at present the Court docket of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She changed Merrick B. Garland, who joined the Justice Division as Legal professional Normal, on the Court docket of Appeals final 12 months, and was confirmed by a vote of 53-44.

As a federal choose in Washington, Choose Jackson has presided over a number of politically charged circumstances. In 2017, she sentenced the gunman who stormed a Washington pizzeria focused by “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorists to 4 years in jail. She additionally dominated in 2019 that Donald F. McGahn II, the previous White Home counsel, could be required to testify earlier than Home impeachment investigators contemplating articles of impeachment in opposition to President Donald J. Trump.

Private life

Choose Jackson is married to Dr. Patrick Graves Jackson, a surgeon who she met whereas learning at Harvard. They’ve two daughters.

She can also be associated by marriage to a former Home Speaker and Republican vice-presidential nominee, Paul Ryan. His sister-in-law, Dana Little Jackson, is married to Dr. Jackson’s twin brother, William Jackson.