Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has a lot to say - but not about the court

WASHINGTON – Ketanji Brown Jackson was in elementary school when her mother enrolled the future Supreme Court justice in a public speaking program.

“She wanted me to get out there and use my voice,” Jackson told an audience of about 2,000 which greeted her with a standing ovation when she walked onto the Kennedy Center’s concert hall stage Wednesday night.

Her voice has been heard a lot recently.

Jackson, the high court’s most junior justice, is on a media blitz to promote her new memoir, “Lovely One.”

Becoming the first Black woman Supreme Court justice in 2022 had generated a wave of curiosity about the details of her life, she wrote in the book.

After her nomination, reporters dug into her genealogy – and that of her husband’s, whose earliest ancestors crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower while Jackson’s forebears had been brought from Africa in chains.

Jackson was inundated by a wave of letters as well as by personalized artworks and handicrafts, including a crocheted doll in her likeness that played a recording of part of Jackson’s post-confirmation remarks: “I have now achieved something far beyond anything that my grandparents could possibly ever imagined.”

Jackson wrote that she understood why people would want to know how she got to the highest court in the land – and she wanted to be the one to tell that story.

The memoir describes the pride in her African heritage installed by her parents – including her name, Ketanji Onyika, which means “ means “lovely one” in an African dialect -- along with a drive to never give up.

“I distinctly remember thinking that other parents seemed so much more cuddly than mine,” she wrote about their insistence that nothing was too hard to accomplish if she was willing to work for it.

Describing her personal journey

While detailing her climb up the success ladder, she writes about the impact of being one of the few Black students in her classrooms, her interracial marriage to a surgeon, the difficulty of being a new mother, and of raising a daughter with autism.

Jackson was worried that the Supreme Court spotlight would bring unwanted attention to her children, giving both daughters a chance to tell her if they would prefer that she stay on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Leila, who had sent a handwritten letter to President Barack Obama in 2016 asking him to consider her mother for the high court, gave her approval. So did Talia, a young adult at the time of Jackson’s 2022 nomination, who said it was important not to hide her autism or struggles in school.

“It’s not like I have anything to be ashamed about,” Talia told her mom.

Jackson won't dish on the court

What Jackson hasn’t been chatty about – in either the book or her public appearances to promote it – is her two years on the court.

Asked about the conservative majority’s recent opinion giving former President Donald Trump broad immunity for his actions while president, Jackson’s public criticism of that opinion has been much milder than the dissent she joined with the court’s two other liberal justices or the one she penned on her own.

She’s been equally circumspect about the ethics controversies dogging the court, including revelations that Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose receiving millions of dollars' worth of free luxury trips and other gifts.

While Jackson raised no objection to adding teeth to the court’s ethics code, she has declined to say if she supports 18-year term limits for the justices, one of the other reforms proposed by President Joe Biden.

“I'm going to let the political process play out,” she told PBS New Hour. “People are engaged in this decision right now, and it will be interesting to see what we decide.”

And she did not take the bait when late-night host Stephen Colbert referenced the recent controversy over flags with political overtones that were flown at the homes of Justice Samuel Alito.

“Do you have any flags you like to fly?” Colbert asked Jackson.

“No comment,” she said with a laugh.

`Step into our greatness'

But Orandra Cotton, a retired social worker who was among the enthusiastic listeners at the Kennedy Center, was not reticent to offer her review of the Supreme Court.

Cotton said she has lost respect for the court because of recent rulings “that have been so un-American” as well as other “shenanigans.”

“I feel betrayed,” she said. But of Jackson, Cotton said, “I know she’s going to do the right thing.”

Cotton, who wore pearls and pink Converse tennis shoes in honor of the signature attire of another Black woman trying to make history, Vice President Kamala Harris, said she never expected to see a Black woman on the Supreme Court.

“This is the place to be tonight,” she said before Jackson spoke, pointing to her many Black female friends at the Kennedy Center. “We continue to step into our greatness no matter what.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson speaking out on book tour