President Joe Biden is expected to announce Friday that he will nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
If confirmed, Jackson would become the first Black woman to serve on the court. At 51, she would also be the second-youngest justice on the current court (Justice Amy Coney Barrett turned 50 in January) and the first justice since Thurgood Marshall with significant experience as a defense lawyer.
As the successor to Breyer, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, Jackson would not change the court’s current 6-to-3 conservative supermajority.
Biden called Jackson on Thursday night to offer her the nomination, according to a source familiar. Biden and senior White House staff were notifying key officials and individuals of the decision Friday morning.
The nomination comes exactly two years after Biden made his promise during the 2020 presidential campaign to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court.
Jackson was nominated to District Court just eight months ago and was confirmed by a 53-44 vote with the support of three Senate Republicans. Only David Souter, appointed by George W. Bush, came to the Supreme Court with less time on the federal appeals court — under five months in his case.
But Jackson also served eight years as a federal trial judge in Washington. At her confirmation hearing for that position, she received an endorsement from former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who is related by marriage. (Her husband’s twin brother is the married to the sister of Ryan’s wife.)
“Our politics may differ, but my praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, for her integrity, is unequivocal. She is an amazing person,” Ryan said.
Born in Washington, Jackson grew up in Miami, where her mother was a school administrator and her father was a lawyer for the Miami-Dade school board.
Jackson was a national oratory champion and student body president in high school and then graduated from Harvard University and Harvard Law School.
She was a Supreme Court law clerk for Breyer, who once described her as “great, brilliant, decent, with a mix of common sense and thoughtfulness.”