More than two centuries and 115 Supreme Court justices later, a Black woman will serve on the Supreme Court of the United States for the first time.
“We've made it,” Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said to a standing ovation on a sunny South Lawn at the White House Friday. “We’ve made it, all of us.”
Jackson, who called her nomination to the court the “honor of my life,” thanked President Joe Biden as they marked her historic confirmation in front of the White House.
Jackson, 51, is the first Black woman confirmed to the Supreme Court following Thursday’s 53-47 vote by the Senate.
“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.”
Jackson spent the bulk of her speech thanking the people who she said made that moment possible: God, her husband, her two daughters — to whom she said nothing has brought her greater joy than being their mother — the president and vice president, her predecessor Justice Breyer, the White House staff who aided her in the process, plus her mentors, friends and colleagues.
The judge said she took on the role with great pride and responsibility, quoting poet Maya Angelou: “I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”
Harris, the first Black person and woman to serve as vice president, spoke first, celebrating how future generations will view the Supreme Court.
"The young leaders of our nation will learn from the experience, the judgment, the wisdom that you, Judge Jackson, will apply in every case that comes before you," Harris said. "And they will see, for the first time, four women sitting on that court."
As a longtime Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Biden had a front-row seat to some of the most contentious confirmation battles in the court’s history, as well as the hearings for Justice Stephen Breyer, whose retirement this summer is clearing the way for Jackson to join the bench.
In nominating Jackson, Biden delivered on a campaign promise to select the first Black woman to serve 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.
“When I decided to run this was one of the first decisions I made,” Biden said Friday. “I could see it as a day of hope, a day of promise, a day of progress.”
Biden called out Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee for what he called “verbal abuse” and “ vile, baseless assertions and accusations.”
“In the face of it all, Judge Jackson showed the incredible character and integrity she possesses,” he said to applause.
He also personally thanked the three Republican senators who voted to confirm her: Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins.
Biden also chose an attorney who will be the high court’s first former public defender — with the elite legal background of other justices as well. She has degrees from Harvard and Harvard Law School and held top clerkships, including for Breyer himself.
Jackson’s arrival on the bench won’t upend the current 6-3 ideological balance in favor of conservatives, but it has political as well as historic resonance. Biden nominated her on the second anniversary of his pledge ahead of the South Carolina presidential primary to select a Black woman for the court. The move helped resurrect his flailing campaign and preserved his pathway to the White House.
“Like every justice, the decisions she makes will impact on the lives of America,” Biden said Friday. “But the truth is, she's already impacting the lives of so many Americans.”
Jackson is set to take the bench in mid to late summer, once Breyer retires. In the meantime, she will continue to recuse herself from cases on the D.C. federal court where she remains a judge, according to a White House official.