President Joe Biden will tap Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, according to multiple news reports. Brown sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which is the principal court for appeals for Federal Communications Commission decisions.
The D.C. Circuit has been the launching pad for a number of Supreme Court nominees, most recently Brett Kavanaugh, and prior to that President Barack Obama's failed attempt to seat Merrick Garland. Biden last year made Garland the attorney general, with Jackson replacing him on the D.C. Circuit.
Also coming from the D.C. Circuit were current Chief Justice John Roberts and the late Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia.
Jackson, who has been in the conversation for the open Supreme Court seat since before Biden promised to name the first Black woman to the court, is the former vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Committee and most recently served on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She also clerked for the justice who stepped down to create the vacancy, Justice Stephen Breyer.
Jackson is a Harvard Law School graduate, where she was a supervising editor on the Harvard Law Review.
She is a member of the Judicial Conference Committee on Defender Services, the Harvard University Board of Overseers and the Council of the American Law Institute. She is also a board member of the D.C. Circuit Historical Society and the United States Supreme Court Fellows Commission. ■
