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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
was born in Washington, D.C. on September 14, 1970 where both of her parents taught in public schools. The family moved to Miami, Florida where Justice Jackson attended public schools. In high school she excelled in debate and speech competition. She enrolled in Harvard University in 1988. In 1992, she graduated from Harvard-Radcliffe with a Bachelor’s Degree in Government. She earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Harvard Law School in 1996.
After law school, Justice Jackson’s career included private practice, and three federal clerkships, including a clerkship for Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer at the Supreme Court of the United States. In addition to professional experience in private practice, she also worked in public service. She worked for two years for the United States Sentencing Commission, 2003-2005, and as a federal public defender from 2005-2007. She returned to the U.S. Sentencing Commission as a
commissioner in 2010.
She served on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia from 2013 to 2021. President Joe Biden appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2021 and then nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 2022. She took the oath of office on June 30, 2022. Justice Jackson is married to Dr. Patrick Jackson, and they are the parents of two daughters.
Justice Jackson is the 116th Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court and the first black American female to serve. She is an exceptionally well-qualified jurist whose credentials, experience, and evenhanded approach to the administration of justice make her an outstanding justice on the Supreme Court. Justice Jackson combines her expertise as a fair and impartial judge with the other justices on the
Supreme Court that remain dedicated, as Deborah and Justice Jackson, to do everything they can to allow “Justice to roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.” (NIV) Justice Jackson has been “raised up” “for such a time as this!”
Former elitest and racist president Woodrow Wilson, one of the firstpolitical scientists to serve as President of the United States posted that, “All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.” Equal justice under the law is the critical transfusion that the Supreme Court can administer to our wounded democracy. Justice Jackson’s addition to the Supreme Court is a landmark achievement for diversity and
representation on the court.
Justice Jackson’s words of wisdom and encouragement are reflective of what is recorded in Philippians 3:14, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
“In the end, we must trust the path we choose to walk, anchored by a firm sense of our potential, inspired by the people with whom we surround ourselves,
and bolstered by our willingness to keep on. As I often tell the young people I talk to, including my own college-age daughters, ordinary humans can do extraordinary things. So go ahead, and dream as enormously and as courageously as you can. If you are diligent and well-prepared, relentlessly optimistic, and resolute in purpose, you will be capable of creating a brilliant future for yourself. And, as my own life has shown, no matter where we began our journey, or the missteps we will surely make along the way, we must press forward, girded by our blessings and strengthened by our hardships, whether we are laboring quietly outside the spotlight, or in full view on a public stage, we are, each of us, called to write our story in the chronicle of history, too.”
Philippians 3:14 and Justice Jackson’s words are just what true believers in Christ and our nation need in “such a time as this!” After the order of Deborah.
Rev. Herbert T. Owens, Jr.
Church Historian
Historic Pleasant Green
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