Jackson, 51, won confirmation on a vote of 53–47. Presiding over the Senate vote was Vice-president Kamala Harris, the country's first African-American second-in-command. Jackson will replace Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, who will retire at the end of the Court's current term.

The daughter of a lawyer and an educator, Ketanji Brown was born on Sept. 14, 1970, in Washington, D.C. Her family lived primarily in Miami at the time, and Ketanji grew up there. Her father, Johnny, worked in the law and served as lead attorney for the Miami-Dade County School Board. Her mother, Ellery, was principal at Miami's New World School of the Arts.

After graduating from Miami Palmetto Senior High School in 1988, Ketanji attended Harvard University, studying government. She graduated magna cum laude in 1992 and then attended Harvard Law School, achieving a doctorate in 1996; her early work experience also included a role as a reporter and researcher for Time magazine.

She married Patrick Jackson, a surgeon, in 1996. Thus, from that point, her name was Ketanji Brown Jackson. The couple have two daughters, Leila and Talia.

Jackson clerked for Massachusetts U.S. District Court Judge Patti B. Saria and then U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Bruce M. Selya. Her final clerkship was for Breyer, in 1999–2000.

She also worked in private law firms, in Washington, D.C., in 1998 and in Boston a few years later. She served for the better part of three years as special counsel to the United States Sentencing Commission and then, after a few years as a federal public defender, won appointment as vice chair of the Sentencing Commission.

In 2012, President Barack Obama nominated Jackson to the District of Columbia U.S. District Court. She served on that court for nearly a decade, writing many opinions. She won confirmation to the D.C. District Court of Appeals in 2021.

On Feb. 25, 2022, President Joe Biden, who had nominated her to the Appeals Court position, nominated her to serve on the high court. After four days of hearings before the U.S. Senate, she won confirmation of the Senate Judiciary Committee and then the full Senate.

Jackson will be the third African-American to be on the Supreme Court. Preceding her were Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, who is still an Associate Justice.

Jackson will become the sixth woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Her three immediate predecessors–Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor–are all still on the Court. The first female Associate Justice was Sandra Day O'Connor. The second was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in 2020 and famously said that the Supreme Court would have enough women on it when the number was nine (the full complement).