For the first time in American history, today the Senate confirmed a Black woman to become a justice on the United States Supreme Court. Since its formation in 1789, the Supreme Court has only had two previous Black justices (Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas), both of whom were male. Out of 115 justices who have ever sat on the highest court in the land, 108 of them have been White men. Only seven have either been women or non-White. And when the court convenes next fall, for the first time White men will actually become a minority on the court. Or, to put this a much better way: for the first time, the highest court in the land will actually be a lot more representative of the makeup of the citizens of the United States of America. This is a historic occasion, and a very hard-fought victory for all who aren't White men.
The court which convenes in October will have only four White men on it -- Chief Justice John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh. It will have one Black man (Clarence Thomas) and one Black woman (Ketanji Brown Jackson). Sonia Sotomayor is a Hispanic woman, and the other two seats are held by White women (Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett). This is not perfectly representational of America's demographic makeup, but it is a lot closer to it than at any time in history.
Today's confirmation was a bit unusual because Jackson won't take her seat immediately (as is the norm). Justice Stephen Breyer will not step down until the end of the Supreme Court's term this year (including end-of-year housekeeping), expected to be in either late June or early July. Jackson will be sworn in immediately thereafter, and should have enough time to get up and running for the start of the court's new term in October.
Of course, this isn't the biggest reason why Jackson's confirmation was unusual or historic. That distinction would probably have to go to the fact that while she did get a bipartisan confirmation vote of 53-47 (with three Republican senators voting for her), just in case the vote had been tied, the presiding officer of the Senate was Vice President Kamala Harris -- who is also a Black woman, and also the first of her kind to hold this position in all of American history.
Ketanji Brown Jackson's ascension to the high court is cause for celebration for all Americans -- of all races, ethnicities, and genders. It is the shattering of a glass ceiling that should have been broken long ago. But the good news is that once the pioneering "firsts" have made their mark, often these issues fade into irrelevancy in American politics relatively quickly.
While the first Catholic was appointed to the court in 1836 (Roger Taney), the first Jewish justice wasn't appointed until 1916. From the Wikipedia entry on Louis Brandeis:
The controversy surrounding Brandeis's nomination was so great that the Senate Judiciary Committee, for the first time in its history, held a public hearing on the nomination, allowing witnesses to appear before the committee and offer testimony both in support of and in opposition to Brandeis's confirmation. While previous nominees to the Supreme Court had been confirmed or rejected by a simple up-or-down vote on the Senate floor, often on the same day on which the President had sent the nomination to the Senate, a then-unprecedented four months lapsed between Wilson's nomination of Brandeis and the Senate's final confirmation vote.
These hearings were contentious. Brandeis was accused of being a social justice reformer, and a lot of the opposition was couched in the fears of the establishment of what would happen if such a "radical" were to be seated on the court. But there was a heavy undertone of anti-Semitism to the opposition as well.
Once the barrier was broken, other Catholic and Jewish justices followed -- but there was a feeling that their representation should be limited to one (or at most two) seats. Up until the 1980s, no more than two Jews or two Catholics ever sat on the same court, and such overlaps were rare -- most years saw only one in the "Jewish seat" and one in the "Catholic seat." More recently, religion has not played much of an issue at all among justices or nominees, and America has now actually seen a Supreme Court made up of nothing but Catholics and Jews -- a situation that would have been downright inconceivable a century ago.
In a similar vein, after the first Black justice was seated in 1967, the court had a "Black seat" that George H.W. Bush continued when he nominated Clarence Thomas (after Thurgood Marshall resigned). For the first time since 1967, however, there will be two Black justices in the court's next term. From this point on, being Black might not be all that notable for future nominees and nobody will think that "they're only entitled to one seat" anymore (hopefully, at any rate). There are plenty of other minorities that have never been represented on the highest court in the land, so we may see a Native American or a Pacific Islander justice before we see the next Black justice nominated, but when the next Black is named, it will likely be nowhere near as big an issue as it has been for Jackson (and Thomas, and Marshall before her).
Women have been making strides even faster, in the demographics of the court. Sandra Day O'Connor, named by Ronald Reagan, became the first female justice in 1981. Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined her on the court in 1993. By 2010, there were three women on the court (Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan). Next year, there will be four (Sotomayor, Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson). As the number of women justices increased, the issue of gender became more and more minor. Of course, women are still not fully represented on the court in proportion to their makeup of the population at large, and won't be until there are five women justices, but they've gotten awfully close in a very short historical timeframe. Although it might have been inconceivable to someone in the early 1900s to imagine a court made up solely of Catholics and Jews, it's pretty easy these days to imagine a court with a strong majority of women -- even seven or eight of them one day, perhaps. Being female is no bar to having a sharp legal mind or even judicial temperament, and today virtually nobody would argue otherwise. That is progress.
There are plenty of demographic groups that have never been represented on the high court though, which makes me anticipate seeing the first gay or lesbian or bisexual justice nominated before we see another Black woman. Or perhaps seeing someone from an ethnicity or race that has never held a seat before. But no matter when the next Black woman is nominated, my guess is that by that point it really won't even be an issue, except perhaps with the oldest senators who are so stuck in their ways they haven't quite caught up to present sensibilities.
The most interesting thing about watching the demographic shifts on the court is that minority or gender status has in no way dictated ideological leanings. The first woman was a conservative, after all. Of the two Black justices who have served to date, one was liberal and one is conservative. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to see a Republican president nominate a Hispanic conservative to the court in the near future, either. Skin color or ethnic upbringing is no guarantee of any particular judicial viewpoint -- nor should it be. The willingness of Republicans to seek out minorities to name to the high bench is evidence of this, and should in fact be applauded.
The Supreme Court will never be perfectly representational of American society. It can't, at least not with only nine members. Nine means each justice represents 11.1 percent of the country. And even with combining several different demographic checkboxes (a gay Native American, for instance), nine is just too few to adequately represent each and every group that exists in our multicultural society.
Still, it is indeed worth celebrating that beginning next October the country and the whole world will see a Supreme Court unlike any seen in history -- one that contains only a minority of White males upon it for the first time. A court full of faces that would have absolutely shocked and stunned anyone from 100 years ago. This is what will be remembered long after the contentious confirmation hearings have been largely forgotten -- the first court in American history that shows the country has now fully embraced equality for all in a way it never has previously. Ketanji Brown Jackson has made history, and opened the door for others to follow in her footsteps. It is a proud day for her, for her family, for Black women, and for America as a whole.
[Correction: Earlier iterations of this article mistakenly reversed the order of the name to "Ketanji Jackson Brown." We apologize for the error, it has been corrected throughout.]
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
