Ketanji Brown Jackson issues her first written opinion as a Supreme Court justice — a dissent that might seem to leave the justices open to charges of political maneuvering.
Ketanji Brown Jackson issues her first written opinion as a Supreme Court justice — a dissent that might seem to leave the justices open to charges of political maneuvering.
WASHINGTON — She is the first, and so far only African American woman to serve on the Supreme Court. She is also the first appointee to sit on a black bench.
And for a woman, she has faced a great deal of difficulty getting on the bench.
Ketanji B. Jackson has come a long way from the streets of New Orleans, where she was nearly lynched when she was 14.
Her early years were marked by family violence, sexual abuse at the hands of her father and a history of institutional dysfunction.
“I was a survivor,” she told “Inside the Supreme Court.”
Her personal story of trauma and resilience became her intellectual template for her Supreme Court dissent, which was delivered last Wednesday.
In the opinion, Jackson said the Supreme Court’s decisions about how to interpret the Constitution must be done right, while also taking into account the historical circumstances of each individual case.
She was joined by three other Supreme Court justices, including Justice Elena Kagan, who was appointed by President George W. Bush and made one of the court’s most liberal members.
Jackson said the Supreme Court in past decades has been unduly influenced by the values of black folk who have fought so hard for years to achieve civil rights.
“It is time for the Court to stop relying on the racial legacy of the civil rights movement to determine constitutional law,” said Jackson, a former Harvard Law School professor who wrote the majority opinion.
Many commentators have questioned whether Jackson’s dissent will ultimately survive a challenge, based in part on the question of whether it is a mere reiteration of her view that the First Amendment should receive a strict reading, or if it is a different sort of argument from what other justices have made.
“It is a different perspective than most people would see,” said Michael J. Luttig, professor of constitutional law and ethics at the University of Houston. “It is a response to the Court’s failure to give any consideration