Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Learns, Inspires, and Goes to Work

Episode Transcript
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VALERIE JARRETT (00:00):
You both have extraordinarily demanding careers. He actually literally saves lives for a living.

JUSTICE KETANJI BROWN JACKSON (00:01):
Yes. He's a surgeon.

You save democracy for a living.
[Audience cheers and applauds]
[Theme music plays]
[Cassette tape player clicks open]

ALISA ROSENTHAL (00:06):
Hey all what’s going on, you’re listening to Chicago Humanities Tapes, the audio extension of the live Chicago Humanities Spring and Fall Festivals. I’m Alisa Rosenthal, and today, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman ever confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States, speaks on her life experience and groundbreaking new memoir Lovely One. She chats with the Honorable Valerie Jarrett, Chief Executive Officer of the Barack Obama Foundation and former Senior Advisor to President Obama from 2009-2017, making her the longest serving senior advisor to a president in history.
This program is a part of the annual Joanne H. Alter Women in Government Lecture, made possible with generous support from the Alter family. Joanne Alter was the first woman democratically elected to public office in Cook County, and this series honors Alter’s pioneering work on behalf of women interested in social action and public service.
Justice Jackson is a truly inspiring woman, and this program is such a celebration of love, family, and how she got to the Supreme Court. This is Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Valerie Jarrett at the Harris Theater as part of the Chicago Humanities Fall Festival in September 2024.
[Theme music plays]

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. You may be seated. Thank you. Thank you so much for that lovely introduction. Thank you all for being here. I thought that I would start by reading an excerpt from the preface of my book to get us warmed up. "A Sacred Trust. I had to keep reminding myself this moment was real. It was just before noon on the 30th day of June 2022, and I was standing in front of a plain wooden door that would soon open into the Grand West Conference Room of the Supreme Court of the United States. My family was already inside. My husband, Patrick, our daughters Talia and Leila and my parents, Johnny and Ellery Brown, were among the family members and friends who had gathered to witness my historic swearing in. My heart was hammering so loudly that I wondered if the two black robed men standing on either side of me, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. And retiring Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer, could hear it too. Only two hours before they and the other seven justices of the Supreme court had issued their final decision of the 2021/22 term. Justice Breyer, a pragmatic consensus builder, was now stepping down from that august body. Having been privileged to serve as one of his law clerks more than two decades before, I would be stepping up in his place. I drew a deep breath to steady myself as the door in front of us swung wide open and a court officer stepped aside to allow us passage into the room. Suddenly blinded by bright lights, I took a moment to understand that the source was a bank of video cameras set up to record the ceremony. As my eyes adjusted and I processed into the chamber behind the two justices, I felt heartened by the sight of my loved ones beaming for me from rows of chairs on the right side of the room. Chief Justice Roberts began by warmly welcoming those present. Then he turned to me, now assuming a ceremonial air. Are you prepared to take the oath? He asked. His tone more formal than it had been a minute before. I am, I responded in a voice that sounded firmer than I felt. Patrick positioned himself between Chief Justice Roberts and me and held out a stack of two Bibles. Please raise your right hand, the Chief Justice said. And I did so briskly simultaneously resting my left palm on the pair of holy books. On top was our ancient Jackson family Bible. Its brittle pages protected by the black leather binding that Patrick had had the foresight to get refurbished in 2013, when I'd been appointed to the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. I'd sworn every oath since then on this cherished family Bible. Just as I would now swear the constitutional oath to be administered by Chief Justice Roberts, followed by the judicial oath to be given to me by Associate Justice Breyer, nominated by President Joe Biden four months earlier, I, the daughter of African-American parents who had come of age in the segregated South during the 1950s and 1960s would become the 116th Justice and the first Black woman to sit on the Supreme Court in its 233 year history. These these details made the other sacred volume on which I would swear the oath doubly significant. Tucked beneath our family's holy book was the Harlan Bible, donated to the court in 1906 by Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan. This tome had been used for the oath taking by every Supreme Court appointee since then. Each new Justice had also signed one of the book's fly leaves after being sworn in. When the court curator brought the Bible to me in my temporary chambers later that afternoon so that I could add my own signature to the venerated role, I thought about the justices of Harlan's era who collectively decided in the Plessy versus Ferguson opinion that state laws mandating separation of people by race did not violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution so long as the separate facilities were equal. Harlan had been the sole dissenter in the notorious 1896 case. And now here I was, affixing my signature to the back to his Bible in black fountain pen ink. Only one generation after my mother and father had experienced the spirit crushing effects of racial segregation in housing, schooling, and transportation while growing up in Florida, their daughter was standing on the threshold of history, the embodiment of our ancestors dreams, ascending to a position that Justice Harlan and his colleagues likely never imagined possible for someone like me. But if Justice Harlan and his contemporaries could not have pictured this moment, my family and I, and indeed most of America were fully cognizant of the significance of my nomination and confirmation to our nation's highest court. In subsequent conversations with people from across the country, I learned that I had been carried on a million prayers lifted up on my behalf since the day of my nomination. I also fielded an avalanche of invitations to speak or appear in person as excited well-wishers wanted to know my story in whatever form or fashion I would be willing to tell it. How was it? They wondered that someone with such an unusual name and from such an unconventional background came to stand in such an unprecedented place, swearing an oath on two stacked Bibles that symbolized how far our nation had traveled. Mine is an unlikely journey in many respects." And of course, my new memoir is about that journey. Thank you for your interest and I look forward to speaking about it this afternoon.

Wow. Well, we can't see you there. We know you're there. Hello, Chicago. How's everybody doing? That's what I'm talking about.

Thank you.

My goodness. Justice Jackson. I love saying that. Can I say it again? Justice Jackson, welcome to Chicago. I assure you, you will have a warm, warm welcome. And I'm particularly delighted to have a chance to be here in conversation with you.

Thank you for having me.

Absolutely. I had the privilege of knowing Joanne Alter, and she was someone who I looked up to from the very early days when I first joined local government in Chicago. She was a trailblazer, but she was also someone who was really kind to the younger folks and provided a lot of advice and encouragement and told you not always what you wanted to hear, but what you needed to hear. And so I just am so thrilled to have you here. Also. Happy birthday. Your birthday was yesterday.

Yesterday! Thank you. Great.

And thank you for your service to our country and most sincerely.

Thank you. I'm honored.

And thank you for this this incredible memoir, which I encourage everybody do not leave here without purchasing your own copy and buy one for the women and men in your life, because there's so. Well, first off, it's a beautiful story.

Thank you.

It's an honest and authentic story of a life that is not anywhere near finished, but at a particularly important moment in time. So we're going to jump right in. But but let's begin with why now? Why did you decide that this was a moment with everything you have going on?

Yes.

Pretty busy that this was the moment to not just write, but publish your memoir.

Well, first, let me just say thank you so much. Thank you, Chicago, for having me and for allowing me to talk about the memoir, which I actually started writing, I would say, a little over two years ago, right after the confirmation. Some of you may have heard about that. It was an arduous process, to say the least. And I was just so grateful to have gotten through it successfully. And before I embarked on this new stage of my life, I thought, you know, I should really reflect, I should reflect and pay tribute to the people and the circumstances that I really feel were most responsible for this achievement. As I say in the preface, I really believe that no one reaches the highest of heights on their own. And there were so many people that I talk about in the book who invested in me and mentored me and poured into me. And I just thought this was a good opportunity to to acknowledge that.

Well, it is a wonderful thank you to them. And so let's begin with some of that.

Yes.

I love storytelling. You're a beautiful storyteller. So let's talk about your story and begin with your roots. Tell us about your people, where you're from, how you were raised.

Yes.

Those early influences in your life.

Yes. Well, I was born in Washington, D.C., but raised in Miami, Florida. And I guess to to begin at the beginning, as my mother would say, my parents had grown up in South Florida, in Miami, in a time of racial segregation. This was where laws prevented them, essentially as African-Americans from participating fully in the public goods and services that white citizens could participate in. And my parents went to historically Black colleges and universities in the 1960s and then decided to go to Washington, D.C., as so many African-Americans did after Jim Crow or segregation ended. I was born in 1970, and I have to say that the significance of the timing of my birth, which I had nothing to do with, cannot be overstated because 1970 was within 5 or 6 years of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the end of Jim Crow. And my parents moved to Washington, like so many other African-Americans, because that was where these legal changes came that allowed them to take full part of American citizenship. And they thought, here's our shot. You know, our daughter is here and she's going to do all the things that we didn't get to do. So if there were swimming lessons, I was doing them. If there was, you know music lessons, my mother put me in them. I talk in the book about how when I was very, very little, my mother had me on the stage doing recitations at the Dade County Youth Fair because, you know, my parents really just invested in me. They were public school teachers when I was born, and they wanted me to have an education and have all the opportunities. And that was really how I was raised. Now my brother is here somewhere. He lives in Chicago. He and I are actually almost a decade apart, so we might get to talk about that. But when I was when I was growing up, it was, you know, I was the first generation after the civil rights movement. I say in the book that if Dr. Martin Luther King gave America a metaphorical check come due, then my generation gratefully reaped the first installment. We were the ones who got the benefit of all of the effort. And so I do feel very strongly that we're standing on the shoulders of the generations that came before us.

You say in the book that about your dad, "A boy who had started out digging wells with his father in rural Georgia had left dastardly Jim Crow square in the eyes and refused to be bound by its oppressive dictates." And I think that sums up his attitude, but one that he instilled in you.

Well, that was that actually, that was my grandfather.

All right.

When grandfather who had lived in Georgia and moved to Miami and started his own landscaping company after years of being a chauffeur for a white family, he decided, I'm going to do my own thing. So I was referring to him. But my father, after my parents were in D.C., my dad was a public school teacher in history, and he was taking his kids to the Capitol. He was showing them, you know, things in the government, and he decided that he was interested in law and that he would go back to law school. And this was when I was about three years old and he got into the University of Miami Law School. And so my parents moved us back. And we actually lived on campus at the University of Miami because they had this section of apartments that was called Married Students Housing. And we lived on campus. And so my earliest memories I'm four years old and I'm at the kitchen table with my dad across from me. And he has his law books and I have my coloring books and we are working together. And I honestly never thought that there was anything that a person was supposed to do but go to law school because that was how that was how I was raised.

Yes. Well, so even from the age four, you had a sense of the direction you were going. Now, your name is a very special family you know your name, too. So tell us a little about your aunt and how she came up with your name, which then, of course, reflects on the title of your book.

Yes. So my parents having, you know, come of age during the civil rights struggle and, you know, really wanted to give me an African name to reflect our heritage. And my aunt, my mother sister to whom she was with whom she was very close, was in the Peace Corps in Africa in 1970 when I was born. And my mother asked her to send a list of African names. And my mother picked Ketanji Onyika, which she was told meant lovely one. And so that's the title of my book.

There are threads throughout her book about perseverance, and I want to touch on the first one that really struck me. You had a near-death experience.

I did.

At an early age.

I did.

Share what happened and how the lesson that you took from that, which would be a little different lesson than most people would take about the experience.

Well, again, you have to I'm glad you started at the beginning because people now get a sense of how I was raised in the sort of people from whom I come. The experience occurred when I was about 7 or 8 years old. My mother was in our family where we were at a backyard pool party barbecue for one of the teachers in my mother's school, and I was taking swimming lessons. I was a very confident swimmer, but the thing I loved to do the most was float float on my back. And I somehow ended up over in the deep end of the pool floating. And I looked and when I looked over, I was too far from the edge. And I panicked. And I flailed and sunk to the bottom of the pool. And there was so much, you know, kind of reverie on the mind that no one saw me at first. And I was, you know, drowning. And the host of the party jumped into the pool, fully clothed when my mother saw me and pulled me out. And I was obviously very relieved to be out of the pool. But I was also really disappointed in myself because I knew how to swim. And so the question was what will what happened in that situation? And I guess my takeaway that I then go on to apply across my life in a lot of ways is that, you know, whenever I'm in the deep end of a situation, I will swim. That is how I like approach, approach life now.

I told you, it's an unusual take away from a near-death experience. I should try harder like I did something wrong, it's on me. One of the other stories that you tell that talks about the importance of humility and you learned it at a very young age, quite painfully taught to you by your mom about.

Very very painful.

About your grandmother.

It was very painful.

So tell us that story.

So my grandparents had grown up in rural Georgia. They did not have formal schooling. But my grandmother was wonderful, wonderfully kind, beautiful human being, very religious. We used to go to church. She used to take our family to church. I mean, just a wonderful person. She would have on Sundays big dinners at her house. My mother was one of five children and they all had families. And we'd have these huge after church family gatherings at my grandmother's house. And so one Sunday I might have been 8 or 9 years old. I come into the kitchen and I look, I'm going to wash my hands. And in the kitchen, in the sink, there is a note written on a white paper napkin. And the note says something to the effect of "Broke sink. Wait for repair." But the words are all misspelled, you know, And I'm 8 or 9, and I've done little speaking competitions and I got an A on my spelling test. So, you know, I'm looking at this note and I think it's hysterical. Who doesn't know how to spell repair? I mean, I was feeling very high and mighty. And so I go and I find my mom to show her what this funny thing is that I see. And she was irate. I mean, she was just so hurt and disappointed in me that I would laugh at somebody who couldn't spell as well as I could spell. Not to mention the fact that it was my grandmother. And she was like, you know, I don't know. Aren't we raising you better than this? I thought we were raising you better than this. You should not be laughing at people who can't spell as good as you are. You think you are so you know so much. And I was just devastated. I wept all afternoon. I was embarrassed. I didn't realize that it was my grandmother's note. But even if I had, I mean, it was not the right thing to do. And I learned about humility through that experience.

And it stuck with you.

It stuck with me. It was I was so embarrassed that it stuck with me. Yeah.

So your parents, your grandparents, your aunt, you have all of these incredible role models who are instilling in you these core values. But you also told a story about being about age 12 and right before your 12th birthday and reading a magazine, whether it was Ebony or Black Enterprise, not quite sure. And you heard about or learned about a couple of women.

Yes.

Who had your same birthday.

Yes.

And tell us how how that set with you and how how they changed in the sense of your life.

Well, you know, I had wanted to be a lawyer from the beginning, as I said. But one day I'm in middle school and I'm looking through one of these magazines. Back then, you know, the popular magazines for African-American families were Essence, Ebony, Jet. So it was one of those. And they featured Constance Baker Motley, who was the first African-American female judge on the federal bench. And it just so happens that she and I have the same birthday. So that was the thing that really stuck out for me that I felt very connected to her as a result of that. And then to think she was a judge and the idea of being a judge first kind of started brewing in my mind. And this was just a few years after Justice O'Connor had been appointed the first woman on the Supreme Court. So getting acquainted with, you know, figuring out understanding that there were women and Black women who were moving in to this kind of profession, doing this sort of thing really stuck with me and was very inspirational.

So they were trailblazers, but at the same time, you're still a Black girl.

Yes.

And experiencing what almost all Black girls experience when you go into a store and you may be there with your white classmates and you're treated differently and you had one of those experiences.

Yes. Well, many throughout my life I talk about one in the book in high school where friends and I had gone to the store where I was on the speech and debate team for my high school. And it was such a wonderful experience, which I talk about as well. But we used to go to stores to buy things, to make posters. Because we would have to sell things in order to pay for our trips. So we would sell candy, cookies, bagels and whatnot. And we would go to the store to buy the supplies. And I recall a situation in which my friends and I walk into the store and the salesperson comes over to me immediately and follows me around the store and, Can I help you? You know what? Won't let me touch things. And it was very kind of eye opening for me. And then that sort of thing happened quite a bit growing up in different ways, ways throughout my life.

How did your parents help you understand that? Did you go home and even tell them about it? Because I'll tell you, when things like that happen to me, I'm not sure I even told my parents.

Yeah, no. I had a conversation once, definitely with my grandmother, who my grandmother used to always called call me or say to my mother about me that she believed I was a blessed child, which I think is actually true. But I remember talking to her about it and she said something to the effect of, you know, don't let those people bother you because you were destined for so much more than they can even imagine. And that was the kind of message that I would get from my grandmother, from my mother, who would say things like, Guard your spirit. Don't let people, you know, bring you down because you have other things that you need to focus on. So I learned to navigate those situations with the help of my family.

When I mentioned to you backstage that Michelle Obama and you and I all had college counselors -

Yes.

Who discouraged us from applying to the very best schools.

Yes.

And when that happened to you, what was your what was how did you deal with that? Did you decide, well, I'm just going to apply anyway, or did it anyway enter into your psyche as perhaps being true?

Well, you know, I was the kind of person who was like, I'll show you. What are you talking about? I was not easily deterred. And especially since at that point I had done very, very well on the speech and debate circuit. I was as a competitive speaker, I was winning national tournaments and I actually didn't know I ended up going to Harvard, but I didn't know anything about Harvard coming from a big public school in Miami, except that they had a debate tournament. And I had gone to this tournament every year, 2 or 3 years in a row, and I thought, this seems like a pretty nice school, you know? People seem happy here. So I applied just from that experience. And to have a counselor just go, you know, maybe you should think about some other school. I was like, What are you talking about, guy? So I went ahead and applied. Now, that's not to say I had an easy time necessarily when I got there.

Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about that.

Before we do can I tell a grandmother story?

You can do whatever you want to!

Well no, it's just funny because whenever I think about going to Harvard in this period of my my life, I get into Harvard after being discouraged and I'm so excited. I run to my grandmother and I say, Grandma, Grandma. I got into Harvard. And she says, Oh Howard, that's such a wonderful school! And I said and I said, you know, I said, you know, Grandma. I know that I said I wanted to go to school in Washington, D.C., but this is Harvard and it's in Massachusetts and it's such a great school. And she said, Oh, well, I guess Harvard is probably a good school, too.

Keeping you humble. Keeping you humble for sure.

She absolutely never knew that I went to Harvard.

So you get to Harvard. And you had a little bit of what which now has a name which didn't have a name when I was younger, which is called imposter syndrome.

Yes.

I thought I was the only one who had that feeling. And now when it has a name, to it you go, well, maybe there are other people who feel that way, too. So tell us a little bit about how you were feeling in the beginning and this blessing of a woman who walked by you and said something that has also stuck with you to this day.

So I had many blessings quite early on at my time. But, you know, you first get there and you're very excited because, you know, freshmen move in day and you're meeting new people and you're thinking, I'm at Harvard, This is amazing. But I guess about 3 or 4 days in when your family is gone and you're starting to settle in, I started to feel very, very much like a fish out of water. I was meeting a bunch of prep school kids who had been training for this their entire lives, who knew what Harvard was before they were seniors. You know. And I was just feeling like my birthday is very early in the term. And when you're a freshman and you turn 18 and your birthday's in September and you're away at school, nobody knows who you are. And it's like a big birthday. I was just so depressed. And I'm walking, oh and I'm sorry – my grandmother had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. And I'd heard about it. Obviously, I wasn't there. And, you know, I was feeling very bad. And I'm walking on the path through Harvard Yard. And a woman I don't know, a Black woman is coming toward me. And right as we cross each other, she must have seen this in my countenance. And she leaned over and she said, "Persevere." And she kept walking.

And that's it. And that's all she said. Never saw her again.

And never saw her again. Never saw her again. And I remember thinking, what was this? You know? And then a couple days later was my birthday. And I got letters from my aunt and my mother. My aunt went from the Peace Corps to become a missionary, and she was traveling all around the world, but also trying to encourage me and encourage people in the family. And she wrote this letter where she said, you know, the Lord has angels, that he has stationed all around you. And I remember thinking, I wonder if that woman was an angel! You know? And then I started feeling a little better. And I started, you know, taking classes that I felt confident in my abilities started doing well, and I crawled out of it. But it was hard at the beginning.

And you also, though, developed a community –

I did.

That helped.

I did.

So tell us a little bit about community, because we cannot do this hard stuff by ourselves.

Absolutely. So I ended up rooming with several women who effectively became my sisters. I mentioned my brother. I there are only the two of us and we're almost a decade apart. So we joke that we are only child siblings because, you know, I was off to college when my brother was nine years old. So I meet these women, Black women in a Black women's or African-American women writers course. And we're taking this class together as freshmen. And I decide to form a study group and, you know, all these women end up coming and we start developing a close relationship. And then we lived together and there were six of us actually in our suite, but four of us ended up going on to Harvard Law School. And really being in each other's weddings and just being really, really close. And it was because of them and in large part that I feel like I got through the college experience.

Speaking of weddings, one of my favorite subjects is coming up. Patrick. Oh my God. How many of you saw him crying at the hearing? And in fact, I was going to say I watched in preparation for it as I watched the interview with Gayle King and he was standing on stage last week crying again. So you describe your high school years as boyfriendless.

Yes.

Although you were class president and doing all this incredible stuff on the debate team but did not have romance in your life. So tell us a little bit about how things got started, how different you two are, but how similar you are as well.

We have a lot of similar values. So Patrick and I, my sophomore year and his junior year, we both take this in the fall. We take a class called The Changing Concept of Race in America. Very interesting title. It was a historical studies class and he would sit behind me and tap on my shoulder and talk to me, pang his keys on my earrings and do all these silly things. And I thought, this is so bizarre. At first I thought, this guy is very goofy. But but then I started to, you know, become friends with him. And we would talk after class about the different topics until I realized that he was friendly with me during this class. And then during our government class, it was like he didn't know who I was. So, you know, I had it. I had this class Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and I had government on Tuesday and Thursday. And I would look down the row and way, you know, and he was so friendly in one class and the other was like, so I said to my roommates, There's this guy who's doing this thing. They were like, Leave him alone. He's crazy. You don't have anything to do with him. And so I said, No, I'm going to confront him on one of the friendly days. So I go, you know, to him and I say, Why don't you talk to me in our government class? And he says, I'm not taking a government class. And I was like, Yes you are! I see you! And he says, Oh, you must be talking about my identical twin brother. Which is true. He has an identical twin brother who was with me in government. So once we got past that. We started. You know, we started developing a friendship. And I have to say, Valerie mentioned how different I mean, Patrick is, if you're familiar with this term, he is a Boston Brahmin. This is, you know, a group of people who came with the Mayflower. He is descendent.

Like literally.

Descendents on the Mayflower. He is seventh generation Harvard. So, like, it's a totally different thing. And but, you know, we're talking to one another. We're friends. We're learning together. We decide to take another class in the spring at the same time. And I'm secretly, like developing a crush. But I didn't think that he liked me and I didn't want to tell him or say anything about it until the last day of school that year. This is the end of my sophomore year, the end of his junior year, he says, Do you want to go and see the summer house that I've been telling you about that my parents own? Now he lives in Boston. His his family's from Boston and they own a house on Cape Cod. And he'd been talking about it. So I say, okay, you know, And so we go, he's driving. And I remember looking at him and thinking, are we on a date? I can't figure out. Are we on a date? Because I never dated, really. And so I was hoping I was very excited to be here with him. The whole day goes by. It's just the two of us. He's showing me the house. We're walking around in the yard and whatnot. Nothing happens. Nothing. He doesn't try to hold my hand. He doesn't say any, you know. So by the end of that, I'm, like, furious. Furious because this is obviously not a date. And he obviously doesn't like me, and I'm just embarrassed and angry. So he says he says, Do you want to go, my parents live in Boston. Why don't I go make us dinner and then I'll take you back to the dorm? And I'm like, whatever, whatever. Fine. So we go. We go to his house his parents are lovely. We have dinner, and he's rented this movie. So he says after dinner, why don't we watch this movie and then I'll take you back to the dorm? So again, I'm like, whatever you want to do, but I really do have to get back. So he puts he puts the movie in the VCR, and then he does one of these. And I was like so surprised by it that I jumped up. And I said, No! No! And he takes my hands and he says, What? What's wrong? And I said, I just don't want to be hurt. And he took my hands and he said, Ketanji, I will never hurt you. I love you. And that was our first date. And we. And we dated continuously from that point for seven years. And then we were, we've been married for 28 years.

Yes so Patrick is clearly one of the good guys. I mean, really, really good guys. But let's just face it, though. You get married.

Yes.

You both have extraordinarily demanding careers. He actually literally saves lives for a living.

Yes. He's a surgeon.

You save democracy for a living. Both important. But it's hard. It's hard. It's hard no matter how much support you have. You love each other.

That's right.

It's hard. And you began perhaps seeing was hard when you were giving birth?

Yes.

And what happened?

Oh. Our first daughter. I'm giving birth at the Mass General, which is where Patrick is in training. And he he's training in this very, very arduous surgical program. And we go in and, you know, now, granted, she was late and I was being induced, so it wasn't like I was in active labor. So I'll give him that. But, but I'm there they get me all situated and, you know, they're putting in the IV and I'm getting all set up and his beeper goes off and he's like, Oh you seem fine! I need to go to the emergency room. I'll be right back. And I was like, I cannot believe this is happening right now. I waited for about five minutes before. I, like, couldn't handle it anymore. So I started pressing the emergency call back and the nurses came in and thinking, Somebody is crashing. But it wasn't wasn't happening.

You wanted your husband.

I wanted my husband.

So it's hard. I guess that's the point, because I think as you look when we see you in that black robe, it looks like you have everything together. And part of the message I think you tried to convey in the book is it's still hard. It's like everything going for you, trying to do the mighty juggle, as my mother used to call it.

Yes.

Is more than a notion. All right. So we're going to fast forward because I could sit here and talk to you all day, but I'm looking at the time clock. And I do want to get to your a little bit more of your career.

Yes.

So you let's well, let's begin with tell us about a decision that you rendered when you were on the district court in DC that that became very personal for you through your daughter.

So I think you're talking about that. I actually was a law clerk for my district.

You were working at it –

Yes.

For a district judge.

I was working for a district judge. So I had the great good fortune of clerking at all three levels of the federal system. And when I was a district court clerk, we had a very interesting case that involved disabilities, learning disabilities. And back then, this is in 1996, the idea of learning disabilities was pretty new, the science was new. And this case was called Guckenberger versus Boston University, where students had sued Boston University when its new president had come in and basically said learning disabilities don't exist and took away all the accommodations that the university had promised them. And we ended up having my judge, Judge Patti Saris, who was one of my great mentors, ended up having a bench trial where she took evidence. And it was very hard as a clerk and as a judge because, again, this is new science at the time, really sort of sorting it all out. But she ended up ruling in favor of the students, saying that the university had to provide accommodations and it ultimately became sort of relevant in my own life years later when Patrick and I had our first daughter and maybe into first grade or so kindergarten, we started noticing that she was having some learning challenges and she had a seizure when she was in kindergarten and ultimately was diagnosed with autism when she was in seventh, seventh grade. And I talk in the book about the sort of challenge of being a parent, trying to understand how to help your child when they're struggling. And it's a very, very difficult set of circumstances.

Even for somebody who's in your position and your husband a physician, it still was hard, but you guys worked through it.

We did.

And and both of your children, I know you were extraordinarily.

Extraordinarily proud.

Extraordinarily proud. But one of them wrote a note on your behalf that I think you may want to share with the group as well.

So.

Lobbying for their mother to be on the court.

Yeah. So my you know, my youngest daughter knew when I was in middle school, I had when she was in middle school, I had already been elevated to the district court. I become a district court judge. And this is right after Justice Scalia died in 2016. My daughter comes to me and my husband and says, Listen, I've been talking with my friends and we know that Justice Scalia died and we think you should apply for that position. I said, Sweetheart. You know, being on the Supreme Court is not a position that you can apply for. The president just has to kind of know who you are among all the lawyers and judges who would want to do that job. And he appoints you. And she said, well, if he needs to know if President Obama it was President Obama at the time, if he needs to know who you are, I'm going to write him a letter to tell him. And she trots off and she comes back with this letter that she has written and was basically like, how can I get this to the president? And the thing that was most gratifying for me is because I had spent a lot of time worrying as a working mom, as someone who had gotten to the position of being a judge with these two daughters who I thought, did I spend enough time? I didn't make the homemade baked goods for the sale. You know, and I didn't even know that she knew anything about my work and what I did. And for her to endorse me to the President of the United States, I mean. I thought I thought I must be doing something right, both because she would feel so passionate about my candidacy, but also that she would feel confident enough to talk to the president. I must be doing something right.

Write a letter to him. Clearly. Well, and in speaking now, it's interesting, you also have a passage in the book about when it became clear that your name was being floated for the Supreme Court when President Biden was in office.

Yes.

And as it became more and more likely that it could happen, you had a conversation with your daughters and then Patrick had another conversation with them without you.

Yes.

Talk a little bit about the message that he tried to. Because what I found interesting is, notwithstanding your ambition since age four.

Yes.

You were willing to not take this.

Yes.

If it was not going to work for your family.

Yeah. The original conversation was one that Patrick and I both convened with the girls because we understood that if I got nominated and if I took this job, our entire lives would then be open for scrutiny. I didn't know how my oldest daughter in particular would feel about people knowing, for example, that she was autistic. I just knew that we all had to be on board and comfortable with this decision because it was going to be that kind of determination. And so we sat them down. The girls were very supportive, which I was grateful for, but I was not going to do it if they'd said, We don't want you to. And then after they expressed their support, Patrick took them aside separately and basically said, you know, you have to understand that this is not just going to be an intense period of scrutiny for your mother and for us as a family. But if she gets it, there will be people who, you know, feel. What did he say? Like they –

They own you.

I mean that –

We feel that way, don't we? We kind of feel like she belongs to us.

That this will change our lives forever. And it will change in a way your relationship with your mother. You're going to have to share her with the country in this way. And. And they said, yes, we understand that, but we really want her to do it.

Well, if anyone saw right, that's wonderful. Well, one of my favorite photographs ever is your daughter looking at you during and you couldn't see her because she was behind you. But the pride and the joy and the love on her face was amazing. You also got another good piece of advice from somebody who worked in the White House counsel's office.

Yes.

Before your confirmation that I'm sure you kept that just buried in your mind and maybe like right in front of you during those hearings.

Oh front of mind, front of mind, I mean, people ask me all the time, how did you get through those hearings? You know, how did you stay so calm? And the White House was very good at training me during this short period of time that I went through prep. But they one of the things they do is they have what are called murder board moots where they bring in people who pretend to be the senators and they take on the character of them and they grill you for hours that you have to, you know, sit there with your composure. And I was not doing well. I was not doing well. And at one point, one of the White House staffers said, listen, you know, you can get angry or you can be a Supreme Court justice.

You chose to be a Supreme Court justice.

I was like, I guess that's pretty easy. So that really helped in terms of just keeping my composure during the hearings.

And just as some of the senators might have been a little bit more combative than we would want, Senator Booker actually moved you to tears.

He did. He did. That actually is for those of you who didn't get to see Senator Booker's question period with me on that last day of the hearing, it's definitely worth seeing. And part of it is actually replayed in the audiobook of my book because it was such a powerful moment. He chose not to ask me any questions, which was a relief after hours and hours and hours of being questioned. And he just started reflecting on the meaning of this moment in terms of having an African-American woman sit on the court. And he would he said things like, Nobody's going to steal my joy. Which was just amazing. And I tried not to cry. I tried so hard, but I couldn't help it.

But you couldn't help it.

I couldn't.

And it was a beautiful moment seeing you wipe away the tears actually made you human. And I think we do want our justices to be human.

Thank you.

So I've been hogging the show. And so now I promise we'd ask at least a couple of questions from the audience. And so I'm just going to read the question and you'll remain anonymous. First one. Do you think that the proliferation of social media has helped or hurt the reputation of the Supreme Court?

You know, I don't know if there is a correlation between social media and the Supreme Court's reputation. I it's just hard to be able to tell whether it's the popular media that's contributing or something else.

Something else that's going. Now. I should I should say this to all of you, just so you don't wonder, like, why? Because I'm. And my next career is going to be in journalism. So you're like, well, why don't you ask all these really interesting questions about the justices? And they don't and their deliberations and who is your favorite? She's not allowed to talk about any of that stuff. So that's off limits. But one of the questions and I think you could answer and it's a good one, it's a process one, which is when you want to deliberating, do you discuss the dissenting opinions first? At what point do they come in? How does it all end up with the majority dissents? You know, people how does that all get worked out amongst yourselves? So is there a set process?

Yes, there is a set process. The court has hearings for each of the argued cases, and that's what the public tends to see and hear about in the news. When we've heard a case. Within 2 or 3 days of such a hearing, the court justices meet privately to vote. So even though the public might not know for months and months and months after a hearing what the outcome is, we know internally in the court because we voted. When that vote occurs, you have a sense, at least preliminarily, of who is in the majority and whether or not there are any dissenting justices. And then we have a process that essentially involves the most senior justice on each side of an issue, appointing or assigning the opinion writing so they could keep the case for themselves or assign it to another justice. Opinions circulate internally. So not only do we know the result, but we have drafts of the opinions that are being circulated. Once the majority opinion goes around, then the dissent is written usually in response and that circulates as well.

So we probably only have time for one more question. And I think it's fitting that we take a question from two young people and it says this

Aw.

Thank you for coming to Chicago. We would like to know how we should think about the future and our place in it. How can we help make the world better for everyone and how can we help understand each other and start with kindness? And the reason I wanted to close with us is for those of you, when when you read this incredible memoir, what you will discover is it is just chock full of kindness. And your grandmother said to you, I think it was you know, To those who much has given, much is expected.

That is right.

And the humility and the grace and the just genuine kindness with which you've been enveloped your whole life and which you now embody. I thought, made this the right last question.

Thank you. Well, thank you for that wonderful question. I mean, one of the things I love to do as a justice is talk to young people. I get lots of school groups that come to the court and I make a special effort, if I can, to go and just interact with them and answer their questions and try to help them see that they are the future. How do you think about the future, you as a young person, you think about educating yourself, getting listening to your teachers, learning as much as you can, because being educated is a way that you will eventually be a leader and be the kind of leader that we need in order to continue to sustain our democracy. You, thank you for the kind words about the book and the value of kindness that I do think has been something that's been a part of my life my entire life. But for me, it really does come down to gratitude that you feel like none of this was promised. It's not really because of something that I have necessarily done to deserve what has been given to me. I just feel so grateful to be in this position. I will close just by observing that even though I'm the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, I'm not the first Black woman who could have done this job. And so, what that means to me what that means to me is just that I feel so fortunate to be the one who has this opportunity when there were so many generations that never got this chance. So I'm giving it back as much as I can, talking to people, writing my story, trying to encourage young people. And I just am so grateful for the chance to be here to talk with all of you today.

Chicago Please join me in thanking Justice Jackson!

Thank you.
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ALISA ROSENTHAL (02:42):
To learn more about Justice Jackson including a link to her book Lovely One
Chicago Humanities Tapes is produced and hosted by me, Alisa Rosenthal, with help from the wonderful staff at Chicago Humanities who are programming these live events and making them sound great. If you like what you hear, leave us a rating, write a review, share your favorite episode with a friend. And hey, we want to hear from you! Help shape the future of the podcast by taking the short survey in the show notes. We’ll be back in two weeks with a new episode for you, but in the meantime, stay human.
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