Newest justice declares, `We've made it, all of us'
Tearfully embracing a history-making moment, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said Friday her confirmation as the first Black woman to the Supreme Court showed the progress of America, declaring, ″We've made it — all of us.”
Jackson delivered emotional remarks on the sunny White House South Lawn a day after the Senate approved her nomination, saying, it was a development the entire country could be proud of.
“We have come a long way toward perfecting our union,” she said. “In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States.”
President Joe Biden, who made his own history by nominating her, stood by her side for Friday's event, celebrating her confirmation as “a moment of real change in American history.” .
Jackson will take the bench later this year, filling the seat of retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on a court that was made up entirely of white men for almost two centuries, that declared her race unworthy of citizenship and endorsed American segregation.
“It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States,” Jackson said.
v“But we've made it. We've made it, all of us.”
Jackson, at times speaking through tears as she thanked her family and mentors for their support, promised to follow in Breyer's footsteps on the bench.
“I have done my level best to stay in my lane and to reach a result that is consistent with my understanding of the law,” she said, “And with the obligation to rule independently, without fear or favor.”
Jackson's remarks on the White House lawn might be the most, and the last, the public hears from her for some time. She won't formally join the court until early summer, and the justices won't hear cases again until October. In any event, justices tend not to say much about themselves in their early years on the court, though some make sporadic public appearances and several have done speaking tours to pitch memoirs or their books about the law.
Jackson's arrival on the bench won't upend the current 6-3 conservative balance.
But in addition to the racial history, it will for the first time put four women on the court at one time.
Biden nominated Jackson on the second anniversary of his pledge ahead of the South Carolina presidential primary to select a Black woman for the court.