Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson reflects on ‘groundbreaking’ path to the Supreme Court in new memoir

By John Fritze and Lauren del Valle, CNN

Washington (CNN) — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is using a new memoir published Tuesday to reflect on a personal journey that has already earned her a place in history.

Jackson recalls sinking into her chair when she was an appeals court judge – her blood “a roaring ocean in my ears” – when President Joe Biden called in early 2022 to say he would nominate her to the high court, setting her on a path to become the first Black woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice.

“From my perspective, my arrival at the pinnacle of the legal profession was indeed groundbreaking, the culmination of a life spent toiling in relative obscurity, marked by my being suddenly thrust into the white-hot spotlight of national prominence,” Jackson writes in her book, “Lovely One.”

She added, “For many, my seat at the table represents the realization of our country’s highest ideals in a land that promises opportunity and equality to all.”

Jackson, who turns 54 this month, joined the Supreme Court two years ago and is already establishing herself as a thoughtful questioner, a prolific opinion writer and a reliable vote for the court’s liberal wing.  Biden’s first and only nominee, Jackson succeeded Justice Stephen Breyer, for whom she once clerked.

In the coming days, Jackson will travel across the country to promote the memoir, speaking to sold-out theaters as well as public libraries. This week, she’ll speak in New York, Washington, DC, Atlanta and Miami.

Her memoir doesn’t delve deeply into the law or behind-the-scenes workings of the Supreme Court. Instead, she tells the story of a modern family – and, specifically, a modern mother – juggling a demanding career alongside a young family, including a daughter diagnosed at 11 with mild autism spectrum disorder.

Jackson details impossible commutes and childcare stresses, parent-teacher conferences that don’t go as planned and stolen naps in Safeway parking lots borne of exhaustion.

But she also focuses on the triumphs at home and at work, including her relationship with her husband, Dr. Patrick Jackson, a prominent surgeon; a diagnosis that helped her eldest daughter thrive; and a nomination to a US District Court judgeship during the Obama administration.

The book’s title is a reference to Jackson’s name. Chosen by her parents from a list provided by an influential aunt, “Ketanji Onyika,” they were told, meant “Lovely One” in an African dialect.

“As I grew older, the sound of my name would often remind me of my aunt,” Jackson writes. “And when people would tell me that my name was unique, creative, and beautiful, I would think of it as a tribute to the woman who had gifted it to me.”

The book offers a personal and relatable narrative of a prominent justice at a time when the high court as an institution is under considerable scrutiny for a series of ethics scandals and politically charged rulings on abortion, guns and presidential immunity.

Speaking at the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem on Tuesday night to promote the book, Jackson acknowledged that the court shouldn’t be exempt from public criticism – though she didn’t embrace any specific ideas for how to address its slipping support.

“The court is an institution that doesn’t have any other mechanism of enforcement than public trust. And so it’s particularly significant when there is a deficit of trust,” Jackson said. “This sort of how our system works – the judges, in my view, are not beyond criticism or constraint. We are a government branch. We are government servants and officials. And so in a democracy, the people decide the form and the structure of government. And so in order to decide that people have to be engaged, they have to debate these issues. And that’s what we see happening now.”

Expanding on those remarks during an appearance on CBS’ “The Late Show” Tuesday, Jackson acknowledged that public perception of the high court is “problematic.”

“I’m aware that that is the public perception, and I think it’s problematic for the court that that’s a perception that the public has, because we really rely on public trust in order to do our jobs,” Jackson said. “It’s a concern.”

Jackson on Tuesday night recalled some of the preparation she underwent for her confirmation in 2022, which at times grew testy as Republicans attempted to get her to define her judicial philosophy and explain some of her sentencing decisions as a federal trial court judge. In one-on-one interactions, the senators were “lovely,” she said, which helped her cope with the sometimes-brutal moments of her confirmation hearing.

“It was also super helpful in the hearing because we had had a conversation, so I said, ‘Oh, I see. You’re not really talking to me, right?’” she said. “’You must be talking to your constituents or to someone else.’”

She recalled some of the best advice she received from White House advisors during her preparation for the confirmation battle that helped her maintain her composure.

“You can get angry, or you can be a Supreme Court justice,” she said she was counseled.

‘Whose history’ matters?

Born in Washington, DC, in 1970, Jackson in her memoir pins her good fortune, at least in part, on timing. She came of age at the dawn of the post-Civil Rights era, with a family that impressed upon her the significance of the moment for African Americans. Jackson not only capitalized on that opportunity but was fixated on meeting the challenges put before her.

“I had understood from the outset that my learning curve as a district court judge would be the steepest I had ever encountered,” she writes about taking her seat on the federal bench in 2013. “I intended to be unimpeachable as I climbed.”

At least some of the landmark anti-discrimination laws that Jackson cites in her book, including the Voting Rights Act of 1965, are now being challenged at the Supreme Court. During Jackson’s first term on the court, a majority of her colleagues barred consideration of race to ensure diversity on college campuses. Jackson dissented in one of those cases and recused herself in another, involving Harvard College, because she had previously served on the school’s board of overseers.

The memoir is being published by Random House weeks before the Supreme Court begins a new term in October that will feature cases dealing with transgender rights, ghost guns and the federal regulation of e-cigarettes. Jackson reported receiving nearly $894,000 from Random House last year, though that is likely only the first of multiple payments.

While justices often publish memoirs after serving for at least several years on the court, Jackson’s went on sale just more than two years after she was seated – far faster than any of her colleagues’ recent books. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett have also announced book deals and Justice Neil Gorsuch published a book of his own earlier this summer.

Though she briefly touches on general legal controversies – such as those dealing with criminal sentencing – Jackson avoids mentioning cases before the court. At one point, she appears to question the way some of her colleagues are focusing on history in their rulings.

“Whose history,” she asks, is being considered in those analyses?

“It is true that not everyone was represented at the table when our country was being birthed, or when our vaunted Constitution was being hammered out,” she writes. “Yet the principles of liberty and equality that the framers adopted and that are now enshrined as the bedrock of our society mean that, today, every citizen can enter those rooms, protected by laws that recognize the civil liberties and human rights of all Americans.”

A diagnosis offers relief

Jackson writes at length about her older daughter, Talia, who is academically gifted but who sometimes struggled with social interactions and transitions at school. After years of navigating what Jackson describes as “outright trauma,” her daughter was diagnosed with autism.

“There is no use in pretending that we weren’t completely devastated by the long-overdue confirmation of what I had suspected all along: that our older child was on the autism spectrum,” Jackson writes. At the same time, Jackson described the news as something of a relief.

“We could end our denial,” she writes.

“As Talia learned to advocate for herself through the years, she would educate us about how she was not ‘a person with autism’ but, rather, was autistic – by which she meant that her autism was an identity as much as her being Black and female,” Jackson writes. “Autism was another lens through which she engaged the world, with full awareness of her strengths and mindful of her trials.”

In thinking about her place in history, Jackson writes that the framers of the Constitution probably couldn’t have foreseen her story – her struggle and, ultimately, her successes.

“I highly doubt that any of them could have envisioned me, the descendant of enslaved Africans, the offspring of parents raised in the Jim Crow era, and a post–civil rights daughter, donning a borrowed robe to take her oath of judicial office and join the ranks of that esteemed branch of government,” Jackson writes. “But that is the very genius of the framers’ foundational guarantee of liberty and justice for all.”

This story has been updated with additional details.

CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report.

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