Ketanji Brown Jackson Vows to Be the First Black Woman on the Supreme Court

Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as the Supreme Court, breaking through the glass ceiling as the first black woman in the country’s highest court.

Jackson, 51, is the court’s 116th judge and on Thursday took his seat on the judiciary where he previously served. Judge Stephen Breyer’s resignation took effect in the afternoon.

A few minutes after his family was reunited, Jackson read two mandatory oaths from Supreme Court justices, one administered by Breyer and the other by Chief Justice John Roberts.

Jackson, a federal judge since 2013, is the first black woman to serve in justice. She joins three women, judges Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Amy Connie Barrett; for the first time, four women will work together in a nine-member court.

Biden appointed Jackson in February, a month after Breyer, 83, announced he would step down at the end of his term if his successor was confirmed. Breyer’s earlier statement and the promise he made was to acknowledge the weak position of Democrats in the Senate in an era of hyper-partisanship, especially in the immediate vicinity of the federal judiciary.

The Senate approved Jackson’s candidacy in early April, 53-47, in a predominantly partisan vote that included support from three Republicans.

Since then, he has lived a kind of uncertainty in court, being a judge on the Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, but not adjudicating any cases. Biden took him to district court, where he was appointed by President Barack Obama.

Jackson can start work right away, but the court will have most of the work done by the fall, with the exception of emergency appeals that sometimes come in. That will give him time to resolve and examine the nearly two dozen cases the court has already agreed to hear since October, as well as the hundreds of complaints that will pile up over the summer.

The court delivered its final judgment on Thursday, after a major and unfortunate deadline that included Roe v. Wade’s abortion guarantee cancelled. One of Thursday’s decisions limited how the Environment Agency could use the country’s top air pollution law to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, a blow to the fight against climate change.