After enduring withering and prolonged confirmation hearings in March and April 2022, Ketanji Brown Jackson is scheduled to become the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Brown Jackson will be officially sworn in as a jurist during a ceremony on live television on Thursday, June 30, 2022, beginning at noon.
“It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, but we’ve made it! We’ve made it — all of us,” Jackson said at the White House the day after she was finally confirmed in a close vote in April 2022, according to NPR.
“I have dedicated my career to public service because I love this country and our Constitution and the rights that make us free,” Jackson also said.
She is going to replace the man she clerked for, Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, after she graduated from Harvard Law School. Breyer is set to retire on Thursday.
Brown Jackson, 51, was confirmed when all 50 Senate Democrats voted for her along with two independents and three Republicans, Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
She will be the third African American to serve in the highest court in the land after civil rights icon Thurgood Marshall and conservative jurist Clarence Thomas.
