Ketanji Brown Jackson on Ethics, Trust, and Keeping It Collegial at the Supreme Court

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Since the founding of the nation, only a hundred and sixteen people have served as Supreme Court Justices; the latest of them is Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, in 2022. Jackson joined a Court with six conservative Justices setting a new era of jurisprudence. She took her seat just days after the Dobbs decision, when Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion overturned Roe v. Wade. Jackson wrote a blistering dissent to the Court’s decision that ended affirmative action in college admissions, in which she accused the majority of a “let-them-eat-cake obliviousness” to the reality of race in America. She also dissented in the landmark Presidential-immunity case. Immunity might “incentivize an office holder to push the envelope, with respect to the exercise of their authority,” she tells David Remnick. “It was certainly a concern, and one that I did not perceive the Constitution to permit.” They also discussed the widely reported ethics questions surrounding the Court, and whether the code of ethics it adopted ought to have some method of enforcement. But Jackson stresses that whatever the public perception, the nine Justices maintain traditions of collegiality (no legal talk at lunch) and that she sometimes writes majority opinions as well as vigorous dissents. Jackson’s recent memoir is titled “Lovely One,” about her family, youth, and how she got to the highest position in American law.

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