Ketanji Brown Jackson, a judge on the threshold of American history

At the age of 17, Ketanji Brown Jackson left her greatest wish in writing: “To be nominated as a judge someday.” Three decades later, she has exceeded all expectations of her and is on the verge of making history, with a lifetime position in the United States Supreme Court.

If confirmed by the Senate, Jackson will become the first black woman to hold a seat on the US Supreme Court, after President Joe Biden nominated her for the post on Friday.

“She has one of the brightest legal minds in our country and she will be an exceptional Supreme Court justice,” Biden said in announcing her appointment.

progressives favorite

At 51 years old, Jackson was the favorite of progressives to fill the vacancy in the high court, mainly because, when she was a judge in a federal court in Washington at the end of the last decade, she frustrated some plans of the then president, donald trump

His resume includes other highlights: nearly two decades ago he represented an inmate at the Guantánamo naval base in Cuba, and he also helped reduce prison sentences for federal drug crimes, which disproportionately affect African-Americans and Latinos.

In addition, Jackson would be the first Supreme Court justice to have experience as a federal attorney for low-income people, a job she did for two years to better understand how the criminal justice system worked.

Since last year she has been a judge on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, considered the second most important court in the country, after a career marked by effort and perseverance.

His family, marked by segregation

Jackson’s grandparents grew up in the southern state of Georgia and both his father and mother, both public school teachers, trained in racially segregated schools and later studied at black colleges.

“I’m pretty sure if you trace my family lineage you’ll see that my ancestors were slaves on both sides,” Jackson said last year at a Senate hearing.

Born in Washington DC in 1970, Jackson spent most of her childhood and adolescence in Miami, inspired by her father’s passion for law, who studied law with voluminous books while she, at his side, colored notebooks from her kindergarten.

“It was my father who pushed me down this path,” the judge said this Friday, during her nomination ceremony at the White House.

Jackson’s parents wanted to give him a name that reflected his African heritage and settled on Ketanji Onyika, which means “beautiful,” or so they were told by the baby’s aunt who volunteered in West Africa.

“My parents taught me that, unlike them, who had to face many impenetrable barriers, my path was going to be clear, if I worked and believed in myself,” Jackson recalled in a speech last year.

From Miami to Harvard

At the public high school where she studied in Miami, called Palmetto, she was a brilliant student who stood out on the debate team and wrote in her graduation book her wish to ever be nominated as a judge.

Still, he faced obstacles likely related to his race: When he expressed his desire to study at Harvard University, his academic adviser advised him “not to aim too high,” according to the White House.

Jackson wouldn’t listen and would go on to graduate cum laude from Harvard twice, before developing a meteoric career that included a stint as an aide to Stephen Breyer, the very Supreme Court justice he now hopes to replace.

He also worked at the United States Sentencing Commission to reduce the sentences of most federal drug crimes, including crack cocaine, which allowed the release of at least 1,800 prisoners and shortened the sentences of some 12,000.

It was a matter he knew closely: his uncle was sentenced to life in prison for a non-violent drug crime, although thanks to an act of clemency by former President Barack Obama, he was released in 2017, shortly before his death.

But Jackson also grew up familiar with the other side of the law: another of her uncles was a police chief in Miami, while a third was a detective, and her only brother was an undercover police officer on the streets of Baltimore, before being sent to Iraq during the 2003 war.

You hinder Trump

Jackson’s best-known sentences came when she was a judge in federal court in Washington: In 2018, she invalidated a plan by then-President Trump to make it easier to lay off public sector workers.

“Presidents are not kings,” Jackson proclaimed in another famous ruling in which he decided that Trump could not prevent a former White House lawyer, Don McGahn, from testifying about the “Russian plot” before Congress.

In 2019, he blocked a Trump plan to expand express exports of undocumented immigrants, although that same year he allowed the president to dodge environmental regulations to build the wall with Mexico, believing that the issue was outside his jurisdiction.

The magistrate has been married for 26 years to the surgeon Patrick Jackson, from whom she adopted the last name without completely detaching herself from her parents’, Brown.

They both have two daughters: Talia, 21, and Leila, 17. In 2016, after the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the youngest of them urged then-President Barack Obama to nominate her mother for the Supreme.

“He is a determined, honest person who never breaks a promise to anyone, even if he would prefer to do otherwise,” little Leila, then 11, wrote in a letter to Obama. Six years later, her wish has come true.