Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson (née Brown; born September 14, 1970) is an American lawyer and jurist who is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Jackson was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Joe Biden on February 25, 2022, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate and sworn into office that same year. She is the first black woman, the first former federal public defender, and the sixth woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court.
Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Miami, Florida. She received her undergraduate and legal education at Harvard University, where she served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer, whose seat she later assumed on the Supreme Court. From 2010 to 2014, Jackson was the vice chairwoman of the United States Sentencing Commission. In 2013, she was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as a district judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. President Joe Biden elevated her to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2021, where she served until 2022. Jackson served as a Harvard Board of Overseers member from 2016 to 2022.
Alongside Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, Jackson is considered part of the Court's liberal wing.
