On the Friday before the Supreme Court’s term began, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told a crowd celebrating her investiture as the court’s first Black female member that they would be hearing more from her.
“I have a seat at the table now,” she said at the Library of Congress event. “And I’m ready to work.”
Still, few were prepared for Jackson’s venturesome debut in the court’s first sitting. Over eight oral arguments, she dominated the questioning and commentary, speaking twice as much as her next most loquacious colleague. It is likely a record for a new justice, according to Adam Feldman, who tracks such things for his Empirical SCOTUS blog.
Jackson was a persistent questioner in every case. Her contributions ranged from the sweeping — a rejection of an originalist interpretation of a colorblind Constitution that provoked swoons from the liberal legal community — to the kind of mundane minutiae upon which even Supreme Court decisions turn.
To wit, in a case…
This article was written by Robert Barnes and originally published on www.washingtonpost.com