WASHINGTON (AP) — Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on the Supreme Court and its newest justice, said before the term began that she was “ready to work.” She made that clear during arguments in the opening cases.
The tally: 4,568 words spoken over nearly six hours this past week, about 50% more than any of the eight other justices, according to Adam Feldman, the creator of the Empirical SCOTUS blog.
The justices as a whole are generally a talkative bunch, questioning lawyers in rapid succession. For now, Jackson’s approach seems less like Justice Clarence Thomas, who once went 10 years without asking a question, and more like Justice Neil Gorsuch, who in his first year was one of the more active questioners.
J. Scott Applewhite
Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stands as she and members of the Supreme Court pose for a new group portrait following her addition, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Friday, Oct. 7, 2022. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
On Tuesday, in a case that could weaken the landmark Voting Rights Act, which sought to bar racial discrimination in voting, Jackson was particularly vocal.
At one point, she spoke uninterrupted for more than three and a half minutes to lay out her understanding of the history of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing formerly enslaved people equal rights. Jackson’s statement ran three transcript pages, the longest Feldman could remember ever seeing.
“I can’t think of a time where you’ve seen a junior justice take hold of the arguments” to the same extent, Feldman said using the court’s shorthand title for the newest justice.
A jurist with a liberal record, Jackson joined a court where conservatives hold a 6-3 advantage, so in many of the most most contentious cases her vote likely does not matter to the outcome. But her performance during arguments seemed to show she intends to make herself heard.
J. Scott Applewhite
Members of the Supreme Court sit for a new group portrait following the addition of Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Friday, Oct. 7, 2022. Bottom row, from left, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Top row, from left, Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
“I have a seat at the table now and I’m ready to work,” she said last week at an appearance at the Library of Congress following her ceremonial investiture at the high court.
In three of the four cases the court heard this past week, she was the most active speaker among the justices.
Feldman said new justices usually sit back and take things in but “poke their heads up occasionally” to ask a question. “This was a different approach,” he said.
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AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
In cases from Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, the court could end any consideration of race in college admissions. If this seems familiar, it's because the high court has been asked repeatedly over the past 20 years to end affirmative action in higher education. In previous cases from Michigan and Texas, the court reaffirmed the validity of considering college applicants' race among many factors. But this court is more conservative than those were.
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VOTING RIGHTS
The court could further reduce protections for minority voters in its third major consideration in 10 years of the landmark Voting Rights Act, which was enacted to combat enduring racial discrimination in voting. The case the justices are hearing involves Alabama, where just one of the state's seven congressional districts has a Black majority. That's even though 27% of the state's residents are Black. A three-judge panel that included two appointees of President Donald Trump agreed that the state should have to create a second district with a Black majority, but the Supreme Court stopped any changes and said it would hear the case. A ruling for the state could wipe away all but the most obvious cases of intentional discrimination on the basis of race.
About the photo: Khadidah Stone stands on the dividing line between her old Alabama congressional District 7, to her right with River City Church, and her new district, District 2, to her left, in downtown Montgomery, Ala., Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022. The line splits Montgomery between two congressional districts and is the subject of a high-stakes case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
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ELECTIONS
Republicans are asking the justices to embrace a novel legal concept that would limit state courts' oversight of elections for Congress. North Carolina's top court threw out the state's congressional map that gave Republicans a lopsided advantage in a closely divided state and eventually came up with a map that basically evenly divided the state's 14 congressional districts between Democrats and Republicans. The state GOP argues that state courts have no role to play in congressional elections, including redistricting, because the U.S. Constitution gives that power to state legislatures alone. Four conservative justices have expressed varying levels of openness to the “independent state legislature” theory.
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CLEAN WATER
This is yet another case in which the court is being asked to discard an earlier ruling and loosen the regulation of property under the nation's chief law to combat water pollution. The case involves an Idaho couple who won an earlier high court round in their bid to build a house on property near a lake without getting a permit under the Clean Water Act. The outcome could change the rules for millions of acres of property that contain wetlands.
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IMMIGRATION
The Biden administration is back at the Supreme Court to argue for a change in immigration policy from the Trump administration. It's is appealing a ruling against a Biden policy prioritizing deportation of people in the country illegally who pose the greatest public safety risk. Last term, the justices by a 5-4 vote paved the way for the administration to end the Trump policy that required asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for their court hearing. In July, also by a 5-4 vote, the high court refused to allow the administration to implement policy guidance for deportations. A Trump-era policy favored deporting people in the country illegally regardless of criminal history or community ties.
About the photo: An immigrant considered a threat to public safety and national security waits to be processed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the ICE Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles, after an early morning raid, June 6, 2022.
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LGBTQ RIGHTS
A new clash involving religion, free speech and the rights of LGBTQ people will also be before the justices. The case involves Colorado graphic and website designer Lorie Smith who wants to expand her business and offer wedding website services. She says her Christian beliefs would lead her to decline any request from a same-sex couple to design a wedding website, however, and that puts her in conflict with a Colorado anti-discrimination law.
The case is a new chance for the justices to confront issues the court skirted five years ago in a case about a baker objected to making cakes for same-sex weddings. The court has grown more conservative since that time.
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NATIVE AMERICAN ADOPTION
In November, the court will review a federal law that gives Native Americans preference in adoptions of Native children. The case presents the most significant legal challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act since its 1978 passage. The law has long been championed by Native American leaders as a means of preserving their families and culture. A federal appeals court in April upheld the law and Congress’ authority to enact it. But the judges also found some of the law’s provisions unconstitutional, including preferences for placing Native American children with Native adoptive families and in Native foster homes.
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BACON LAW BACKLASH
Also on the menu for the justices: a California animal rights law. The case stems from a 2018 ballot measure where California voters barred the sale of pork in the state if the pig it came from or the pig's mother was raised in confined conditions preventing them from laying down or turning around. Two agricultural associations challenging the law say almost no farms satisfy those conditions. They say the “massive costs of complying” with the law will “fall almost exclusively on out-of-state farmers” and that the costs will be passed on to consumers nationwide.
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ART WORLD
The court's resolution of a dispute involving pieces by artist Andy Warhol could have big consequences in the art world and beyond. If the Warhol side loses a copyright dispute involving an image Warhol made of the musician Prince, other artworks could be in peril, lawyers say. But the other side says if Warhol wins, it would be a license for other artists to blatantly copy.
About the photo: Pop artist Andy Warhol smiles in New York in this 1976 photo.
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Chief Justice John Roberts
Nominated to serve as chief justice by President George W. Bush
Took seat Sept. 29, 2005
Born Jan. 27, 1955, in Buffalo, N.Y.
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Pablo Martinez Monsivais
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas
Nominated to serve as associate justice by President George H.W. Bush
Took seat Oct. 23, 1991
Born June 23, 1948, near Savannah, Georgia
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Associate Justice Samuel Alito
Nominated to serve as associate justice by President George W. Bush
Took seat Jan. 31, 2006
Born April 1, 1950, in Trenton, New Jersey
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Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor
Nominated to serve as associate justice by President Barack Obama
Took seat Aug. 8, 2009
Born June 25, 1954, in Bronx, New York
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Associate Justice Elena Kagan
Nominated to serve as associate justice by President Barack Obama
Took seat Aug. 7, 2010
Born April 28, 1960, in New York City
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Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch
Nominated to serve as associate justice by President Donald Trump
Took seat April 10, 2017
Born Aug. 29, 1967, in Denver, Colorado
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Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh
Nominated to serve as associate justice by President Donald Trump
Took seat Oct. 6, 2018
Born Feb. 12, 1965, in Washington D.C.
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Associated Pres
Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett
Nominated to serve as associate justice by President Donald Trump
Took seat Oct. 27, 2020
Born January 28, 1972
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Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
Nominated to serve as associate justice by President Joe Biden
Took seat June 30, 2022
Born September 14, 1970
Monday was the court’s opening day and Jackson’s first on the Supreme Court bench. The justices were about five minutes into their questioning in what turned out to be a nearly two-hour argument in a dispute over the nation’s main anti-water pollution law when Jackson asked her first question; she was the fourth justice to do so.
By the end of arguments, she had probed the meaning of the word “adjacent,” asked whether a marsh in a 1985 case was “visually indistinguishable from the abutting creek” and prefaced another question by saying: “Let me try to bring some enlightenment to it by asking it this way.”
Jackson was confirmed in April but did not take her seat until the court began its summer recess in June, giving her months to study cases the court had granted. Other justices spent some of that time finalizing opinions in cases that included decisions overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights case and expanding gun rights.
J. Scott Applewhite
Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stands between Associate Justice Samuel Alito, left, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan, right, as she and members of the Supreme Court pose for a new group portrait following her addition, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Friday, Oct. 7, 2022. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in early April, days before Jackson was confirmed, Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted “fortunately there will be some lead time” for the new justice to ease into her role. Barrett, in contrast, heard her first arguments a week after she was confirmed. Justice Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in on a Saturday and heard his first argument the following Tuesday.
Justices themselves have acknowledged it takes time to get used to sitting on the highest court in the land. Justice Elena Kagan once compared starting the job to ” drinking out of a fire hose ” with a learning curve that “is extremely steep, sometimes it seems vertical.” Some justices have said it takes five years to feel really comfortable in the role.
In her Library of Congress appearance, Jackson talked about the attention on her as the first Black woman to be a justice. People approach her with “what I can only describe as a profound sense of pride and what feels to me like renewed ownership,” she said.
Their message to her is “in essence, ‘You go, girl,”‘ Jackson said. “They’re saying ‘Invisible no more. We see you and we are with you.'”
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