CLEVELAND, Ohio — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said during an appearance in Cleveland on Monday that the public’s eroding trust in the Court as an institution poses “a problem” for the justices.
The justice was asked during a City Club of Cleveland forum about a recent survey that showed the nation’s confidence in the Court had dropped 22% between 2019 and 2022.
“All we have is the citizens’ commitment to the rule of law and their trust and belief that the court is doing what it needs to do to promote the law,” Jackson said. “Whenever there’s an erosion of public confidence, that’s a problem.”
Jackson, however, declined to wade into the cause of the public’s loss of trust in the Court and whether it is a symptom or a cause of the nation’s deepening polarization.
Jackson, the first Black woman to take the nation’s highest bench, largely sidestepped questions about her colleagues and the court’s relationship to the nation’s political polarization during an appearance in Cleveland Monday.
Jackson spoke during a Q&A forum hosted by the City Club of Cleveland at the Huntington Convention Center of Greater Cleveland. The appearance was the latest stop on Jackson’s tour to promote her book, “Lovely One: A Memoir,” published earlier this month.
The forum was moderated by NPR host Michel Martin, who asked Jackson about a story published over the weekend in The New York Times that reported that Chief Justice John Roberts had steered to himself cases involving contentious legal issues.
Martin did not ask Jackson to comment on the story itself, noting that the Times had already done so, and she and every other justice declined. Instead, she asked how the public should receive that information.
“Under a democratic form of government, the people are responsible for determining the structure and the function of how courts should run, and whether they’re operating properly,” Jackson said. “As citizens, people should absolutely know what is happening in their government, and then decide whether or not to participate in responding.”
Jackson also said that the nation has gone through contentious times before, and they did not last.
“We go through, as a country, cycles of acrimony and concern, and we come through them on the other side,” she said. “All I can say is perhaps we are in one of those cycles now. But history shows us that we are a strong country, and we can persevere.”
Jackson was guarded in her answers to those questions, a contrast to the rest of the hour-long forum in which she spoke personably about her journey from a child of parents born into segregation to one of the most prestigious posts in the world.
Martin said that Jackson’s writing showed a “profound, deep and intimate” side of the justice, that lifted the veil behind the robe and showed demonstrating that Jackson is “down here with us.”
Indeed, several of the anecdotes from her book that Jackson shared during the hour-long forum resonated with the audience, who frequently broke into applause, laughed and nodded their heads.
Perseverance throughout
Perseverance is a common refrain throughout Jackson’s life. Born in 1970, her parents came of age in the segregated south. Her grandparents didn’t finish grade school, and her father put himself through law school at the University of Miami when she was a toddler.
Jackson said her lived experience as a Black woman has had a profound impact on her outlook on life.
She recalled that after she took a lifelong white friend to a Black student mixer in college, he later told her that it was the first time he was ever in the minority in a group and that he was conscious of that.
When she told him that was how she felt every day, he was “stunned.”
“It never occurred to him,” she said. “It just shows that people have different life experiences. You could be going through the same set of circumstances, and people have different perspectives that they bring to it and different understandings of what happened.”
Jackson was a high-achieving student in high school. She was class president, a member of the speech and debate team and in advanced classes. She was often the only or one of a few Black students in her classes, and often felt isolated, she said.
Jackson recalled that, as class president, she was leading the committee that planned the school’s prom. But she didn’t have a date to the actual dance.
She ended up going with a friend.
“I decided that I was just going to focus on what I could control,” she said. “There was nothing I could do about the fact that I wasn’t being asked out like many of my friends, so I was going to be the best class president and orator that I could be.”
In response to a question from an audience member about how she responded to racism and sexism that has been directed toward her, Jackson recalled an incident that happened when she was a member of the Black Students Association. A student had hung a Confederate Flag in his dorm-room window that faced the campus’ quad and shone lights on it. She said that the Black student group protested for several days to get the university’s administrators to get involved.
Her grades began to slip because she and the other students were skipping class to protest. She said she then recalled a Toni Morrison quote that has been a guiding message throughout her entire career.
“‘The very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work,’” the justice quoted the poet.
The crowd broke into applause.
To Jackson, the quote taught her to pick and choose her battles and understand how the actions of others affect her ability to do good work.
“Because that’s why I’m there, and I don’t want anything to throw me off course,” she said.
Jackson gave a similar message of perseverance when State Board of Education Member Meryl Johnson asked what advice Jackson would give to a young girl to convince her that her opinion matters if she is “constantly being outvoted by all the boys.”
“You have to keep speaking nonetheless,” Jackson said.
The power of visibility
Jackson’s life and career is bookended by the power of visibility.
She was inspired to become a judge in middle school, when she learned through reading popular Black culture magazines like Jet and Ebony that she shared a birthday with Judge Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to be appointed as a federal judge and who, as a lawyer, was the first Black woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
And to many in the audience Monday, her historic ascension to one of the country’s most prestigious posts provided them with a sense of visibility.
“I find that very inspirational,” 13-year-old Kai Haynes said at her table with her fellow members of the Saint Luke’s Boys and Girls Club. “She would inspire me to do great things in the future, and I aspire to be like her.”
Lydia Abraham, president of the Black Law Students Association at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, said that Jackson’s confirmation gave Black students a new height to aspire to.
“She’s already broken that barrier for the rest of us,” Abraham, 23, said. “For Black law students watching her, and all Black people in general, there’s just another goal that you can aspire to achieve watching her already having done so.”
Ohio 8th District Court of Appeals Judge Emanuella Groves, 65, said it was thrilling to see the first Black woman justice speak in person. She said she had been waiting for the moment since Barack Obama became the first Black president-elect in 2008.
“Once that ceiling was shattered, I thought anything else was possible,” Groves said.
