Ketanji Brown Jackson Is Confirmed as First Black Woman US Supreme Court Justice
Jackson, 51, currently serves as a judge on D.C. Court of Appeals.
After Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement, Jackson will assume her seat on the Court as the 116th Justice. The court’s ideology won’t be changed by her. There will remain six Republican-appointed justices and three Democrats nominated justices.
With the support of three Republican senators, the need for Kamala Harris to cast an historic tiebreaker vote for Jackson in an evenly divided Senate has been eliminated. In her role as president of Senate, Harris was the nation’s first Black vice president and first woman to do so. The roll-call vote started at 1:45 pm and ended at 2:07 pm.
Harris stated, “On this vote the ‘yays’ are 53, and the ‘nays’ are 47, and this nomination has been confirmed,” Harris declared after the final vote was counted, to loud applause in the Senate chamber.
Jackson has a Harvard College undergraduate degree and a Harvard Law School law degree. Jackson will be the Supreme Court’s only justice to have been a federal public defense attorney. She was a clerk for Justice Breyer and two federal judges.
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