Ketanji Brown Jackson, a circuit judge of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, after President Joe Biden introduced her as his nominee to the US Supreme Court at the White House February 25. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Supreme Court

LAW Dean’s Letter Urges Confirmation of Biden’s Historic SCOTUS Pick, Ketanji Brown Jackson

Angela Onwuachi-Willig’s letter to US Senate: “Black women are vital contributors to our nation’s democracy”

In a letter citing Black women’s underrepresentation on the federal bench, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, dean of the BU School of Law, and more than 200 other Black women law deans and professors urged the US Senate on Friday to confirm President Joe Biden’s nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, to the nation’s highest court “swiftly and with bipartisan support.” 

Onwuachi-Willig, a cofounder of the Law Deans Antiracist Clearinghouse Project, wrote the initial draft of the letter and orchestrated the effort to collect the more than 200 signatures from Black women law professors by Friday afternoon. In the letter, Onwuachi-Willig wrote that she and the other signers were “ecstatic” about Biden’s nomination of Jackson, who, if confirmed, would be the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court—as well as the first former public defender and the first since Thurgood Marshall to have represented defendants in criminal court. (Marshall, appointed in 1967, was the first Black Justice.) Jackson would replace Justice Stephen G. Breyer (Hon.’95), who is retiring.  

Onwuachi-Willig, BU’s Ryan Roth Gallo and Ernest J. Gallo Professor of Law, noted Jackson’s achievements in the letter, writing that “with nearly ten years of service as a federal judge, experience clerking for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and two lower-court judges, and a record of leadership on the United States Sentencing Commission, she will make an incredible Supreme Court Justice.“

Pointing out that the court “decides some of the most contentious and difficult questions facing the nation,” and that its opinions affect everyone in the country, the letter underscored “the importance of having a court that reflects the diversity of experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds in our great nation.”

“As a Black woman attorney, I’m super excited about this transformative moment for our country,” Onwuachi-Willig told BU Today. “As Justice Ruth Ginsburg once said, ‘It’s so important for little girls to see women on the Supreme Court—it’s natural and proper.’ I’m just excited for little Black girls to have the opportunity to look at the highest court and know it’s natural and proper for a Black woman justice to be sitting on the Supreme Court of the United States.” 

It’s also important for people other than little Black girls to see a Black woman on the highest court, Onwuachi-Willig said. Bernice Bouie Donald, a US circuit judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, who was the first Black woman judge in Tennessee, gave a talk at LAW this week, and “she told a story about how when she was first running for state office, she presented herself for an interview and the person running the program told her, ‘You don’t look like a judge,’” Onwuachi-Willig said. “The woman had never seen a Black woman judge before, so the idea was inconceivable to her. That’s why it’s important for everyone—little white boys, young Asian Americans—to see a Black woman justice as ‘natural and proper.’”

The hearings on Jackson’s nomination are expected to be highly contentious—“from this moment on, the Supreme Court nomination will be a fierce and nasty affair,” the New York Times’ Michael Shear wrote after Biden’s announcement. But as Onwuachi-Willig’s letter notes, Jackson has already been confirmed by the US Senate three times on a bipartisan vote, including less than one year ago, in June 2021, for a seat on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. 

In an interview Friday with CNN, Onwauchi-Willig talked about how important it is that Jackson, who has two children, is a mother—“just like Justice Amy Coney Barrett is a mother.” It’s especially important that she’s bringing to the nation’s highest court her perspective as a Black mother, Onwauchi-Willig told CNN. “There are so many issues that face women at the intersection of race and gender and motherhood or just gender and motherhood, and she’s going to bring a really important perspective in that respect.”