US Senate Confirms Ketanji Brown Jackson as First Black Female Supreme Court Justice

Following a Senate confirmation vote of 53-47 on Thursday, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will be the new Supreme Court justice in the United States.

According to Axios, she'll be the court's first Black female justice and the first to have worked as a public defender.

However, as a member of the court's dwindling liberal wing, Jackson will almost certainly lose a number of major cases for a long time.

The appointment of Jackson may force the court to reconsider its response to waning public trust.

It has seen a significant dip in the opinion polls. The justices' lack of transparency on recent procedural and ethical issues has exacerbated the outrage.

“This is a great moment for Judge Jackson, but it is a greater moment for America as we rise to a more perfect union,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said per CNBC.

President Joe Biden's first Supreme Court nominee is Jackson. She will succeed retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, who was appointed to the bench in 1994 and is now 83 years old.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to hold that position, presided the vote to approve Jackson's appointment. As she read out the voting result, Harris looked to choke up with emotion, drawing a flood of clapping and cheering from the Senate floor.

Following the appointment of three of former President Donald Trump's nominees, Jackson will join a court that has become significantly more conservative. Her inclusion will save the liberal wing of the court from being outnumbered 6-3 by the conservative bloc.

CNN said a new junior justice within the marble walls would have a little impact even if Jackson became the first Black woman on the court.

However, a new justice can compel the remainder of the court to reconsider longstanding patterns, as Chief Justice John Roberts has emphasized.

"I think it can cause you to take a fresh look at how things are decided," he told C-SPAN in 2009, in a rare expansive on-the-record interview.

He added: "The new member is going to have a particular view about how issues should be addressed that may be very different from what we've been following for some time."

Five of the nine judges will be under the age of 65, with four of them belonging to the Generation X generation. In the future decades, they will be the face of the court.

Jackson is 32 years younger than Breyer and of a different generation, so the dynamic surrounding the justices' private conference table would naturally be different. Jackson, 51, will join fellow Gen Xers Amy Coney Barrett, 50, Neil Gorsuch, 54, and Brett Kavanaugh, 57, on the Supreme Court. Elena Kagan, who is only 61 years old, is the only other justice under the age of 65.

Roberts and Sotomayor are both 67 years old, while Alito is 72 and Thomas is 73.

Because the five younger justices will have a mix of ideological perspectives (three on the right, two on the left), it's unlikely that a legal outlook distinct from the rest of the court would emerge.