The Senate on Monday voted to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the influential federal appeals court in Washington DC (article available here).
Jackson, a federal trial court judge in D.C. since 2013 and former district, circuit, and supreme court law clerk to Justice Stephen G. Breyer, is often mentioned as someone who could fulfill President Biden’s pledge to put the first Black woman on the supreme court.
Jackson, 50, was nominated in March as part of Biden’s first slate of judicial picks from diverse personal and professional backgrounds. She will fill the vacancy left on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Previous coverage available here. Judge Jackson will become the third Black woman to sit on the D.C. Circuit and just the ninth Black woman among the 836 people confirmed as a federal circuit judges, according to Federal Judicial Center data.
Three other Black women are in the pipeline for federal appeals courts – and all three appear to be on course for confirmation. If those three are confirmed, and none of the current judges retire, it would represent the largest number of Black women serving on appeals courts in history.