Ketanji Brown Jackson Treads Carefully in Talking About Supreme Court

As soon as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was permitted to speak out publicly under Supreme Court tradition, she delivered the keynote address from the pulpit of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. It was September 2023, the 60th anniversary of the Ku Klux Klan bombing that killed four young Black girls as they arrived for Sunday morning services.

“I was a little Black girl at one point,” Justice Jackson said in an interview on Tuesday. “And I just really felt very strongly that I should be a part of that event and use whatever platform I have to bring attention to it and to the court.”

This week, Justice Jackson is speaking out again with the publication of her new book, “Lovely One,” which traces her childhood from Miami to Harvard — where she performed as a scene partner in drama class with Matt Damon — and ultimately to the Supreme Court. She began writing the memoir, for which she received a $3 million book deal, almost immediately after joining the Supreme Court two years ago.

“I wanted to take a moment before launching into that journey, this new chapter of my life, I wanted to look back,” she said in an interview. Seated at the far end of a conference table in the offices of Random House, her publisher, the justice, in cat-eye glasses and a teal blazer, described the process of publishing the book as “being shot out of a cannon.”

Justice Jackson was far less forthcoming about the current court, where she and the justices have come under historic scrutiny after the leaked draft of its decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion. Revelations about the failure of some of the justices — most notably Justice Clarence Thomas — to disclose luxury gifts and travel from wealthy benefactors only intensified the attention.

For a justice who seemed to find her footing on the bench immediately, peppering lawyers with questions and writing sharp dissents, she was circumspect in addressing the existing pressures facing the court.