President Joe Biden will nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, according to the Associated Press. She will be the first Black woman in U.S. history selected for the court and a landmark moment for representation.
In January, Biden promised he’d nominate the first Black woman after Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement. The search has been underway for suitable candidates since then.
“I’ve made no decision except one: The person I will nominate will be somebody of extraordinary qualifications, character and integrity,” he said. “And that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court. It is long overdue.”
If confirmed, Jackson would be the third Black justice in history and the second Black member of the current Supreme Court, alongside Justice Clarence Thomas. She’d also be the sixth woman in history to serve on the court, and it would be the first time that four women served together on the nine-person panel.
Jackson is currently a judge on the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., where she was appointed last summer. Her policies lean liberal, and she would fill in for the liberal Justice Breyer on the 6-3, conservative-favored Supreme Court. Jackson also worked as a clerk for Breyer earlier in her career. She grew up in Florida, where her father was an attorney for the Miami-Dade County Public Schools and her mother was a principal of a high school. One of her uncles was Miami’s police chief, and another was a sex crimes detective. She studied government at Harvard later attended the university’s law school.