Ketanji Brown Jackson has made history as the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. She was sworn in as the 116th Supreme Court justice and took the oath of office on Thursday, replacing retiring Justice Stephen Breyer after the court released its final rulings for this term.
In April, the Senate confirmed Jackson to the nine-member bench, giving the U.S. Supreme Court a Black female justice for the first time in its 233-year history.
“It’s an extraordinary day,” Vice President Kamala Harris said at the time after leaving the Senate floor where she presided over the historic confirmation vote of Jackson to the Supreme Court.
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“I think it’s a very important statement today about who we are as a nation that we put Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on the highest court of our land. So let us all I think rejoice,” Harris said.
Prior to her appointment to the Supreme Court, Jackson was a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Before this, she was district judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia from 2013 to 2021. In June, Biden nominated her to fill Merrick Garland’s seat on the D.C. Circuit after Garland was confirmed as attorney general. Jackson has also clerked for three federal judges in the past, including Breyer himself from 1999-2000.
Judges live moderate lives and those in the United States are not different. Through their salaries and other allowances they are entitled to, some of them have been able to accumulate moderate wealth.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Justice Jackson has a net worth of approximately $400,000, with a combined net worth with her husband amounting to $1.5 million. According to GoBankingRates, other sources place her assets at an estimated $2 million (net worth and salary) and the broader “between $2 and $5 million.”
Now, as a Supreme Court justice, Jackson will see a slight increase in her salary from her previous position as a federal Court of Appeals judge. GoBankingRates notes that associate justices receive a yearly salary of $274,200 and the chief justice is paid $286,700 per year.
Jackson was born in Washington DC and raised in Miami by parents who are both graduates of historically black colleges. Jackson has two degrees from Harvard University, which she attended as an undergraduate and as a law student, and once served as editor of the Harvard Law Review. While at Harvard, BBC reports that she led protests against a student who draped a Confederate flag from his dorm window.
During the House impeachment inquiry, Jackson presided over the attempt by the Trump Justice Department to prevent former White House counsel Don McGahn from testifying to Congress. Jackson’s husband is a surgeon and she has two children.
