Justice Jackson Visits UVA on Book Tour

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson talks with her Harvard Law School roommate Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, UVA’s White Burkett Miller Professor of Law and Public Affairs.

Source: Lathan Goumas, University Communications

Last Thursday, hundreds of UVA Law students filed into Caplin Auditorium to watch a conversation between Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and her Harvard Law roommate, Professor Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, director of UVA’s Education Rights Institute. The visit to the Law School, and to main grounds later that evening, was part of a promotional tour for Justice Jackson’s memoir, Lovely One, which recounts her path to becoming the first female African American justice on the Supreme Court. That long journey took her from a childhood in Miami to Harvard undergrad and Law School, and then into a familiar groove of Big Law, clerkships, and progressing judgeships. The memoir details not only her career, but also her life with her husband, Dr. Patrick Jackson, a surgeon, and their daughters ​​Talia and Leila.

The session began with a reading from the preface of Lovely One by the Justice herself, where she recounted the feelings of excitement and nervousness from the moments just before being sworn in. From there, Professor Robinson and Justice Jackson engaged in an interesting but light conversation about the book and Justice Jackson’s experiences.

Of much interest to the typical UVA Law student was Justice Jackson’s experience at Harvard Law. The Justice candidly reported that she “did not have a good time at law school,” and that her experience was very similar to The Paper Chase, John Jay Osborn Jr.'s 1971 novel about a student terrorized by his contracts professor. Positive highlights of her time at Harvard Law included her work on the Harvard Law Review, which she called “an escape” from other stressors, and her property and federal courts classes. For Justice Jackson, the realization that she actually enjoyed federal courts was a sign to her that she would like being a judge.

Also addressed was Justice Jackson’s time in Big Law at Goodwin Proctor in Boston, which she also (fairly understandably) disliked. This choice of job was really part of a compromise with her husband, Patrick. Together, they were seeking to have it all: two careers, a loving marriage, and a family. She took a Big Law job to support him while he did his clinical rotations at Massachusetts General Hospital. Then, while she clerked in D.C., he took time off of med school to support her. Arriving at this “balance” was a challenge, but was of course ultimately worth it. Similarly rewarding was the time spent clerking with “her” judges: Judge Patti B. Saris (U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts), Judge Bruce M. Selya (U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit), and Justice Stephen G. Breyer. She said that each of the three was amazing in their own way. Judge Seyla, she recalled, was particularly meticulous, having a practice of sitting down with all his clerks at a big table, and going through his opinions line-by-line. Then-clerk Jackson would assert that a comma was misplaced; Judge Seyla would examine the line thoughtfully, consider the suggestion, finally tell her “no, it’s supposed to be like that,” and then move on to the next line.

Justice Jackson’s nomination and confirmation to the Supreme Court occurred in 2022 at a breakneck pace, with just forty-two days between initiation and approval—a reaction to the thirty-day confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the twilight days of President Donald Trump’s first term. Justice Jackson shared that she was “furious” about the accelerated timeline, and how President Biden’s staff lumped senatorial meetings on top of confirmation hearing prep, but ultimately she spun those meetings as “the best thing,” because they helped her separate the senators as people from the senators as politicians. Justice Jackson said that in the private meetings, the politicians were extremely nice and polite, but in the hearings they gave her a very hard time. (Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz went unmentioned, but both of them clearly fell into this camp.) However, the private meetings helped her put the browbeating into perspective as a performance for their constituents, not as attacks laced with genuine vitriol directed towards the Justice personally.

Justice Jackson’s understanding of that situation was both mature and relentlessly optimistic. Someone with a more fragile temperament could easily have understood the hearings to be exactly the opposite: that the politicians were being phonily polite to her face, and then genuinely nasty as a way to throw her for a loop. But it is likely this sort of positive thinking that has aided Justice Jackson during the other challenges she faced on her path to the Supreme Court: her time at Harvard, in Big Law, and in finding compromise during her marriage. Her story and her perseverance is an inspiring tale to similarly ambitious law students, and a lesson in grit and perspective.

However, one note of disappointment was the lack of any real legal substance to the discussion. Though entertaining and interesting, the conversation between Justice Jackson and Professor Robinson did not hit on any pertinent issues or explore Justice Jackson’s personal legal philosophy. The hand-picked student questions were also somewhat tired. One was, “what is your advice to law students,” to which the Justice essentially responded, “write outlines,” which was slightly less helpful than a Peer Advisor session. The part of the event which the law students seemed most interested in was a mere minute of time before the conversation started, where members of the audience were allowed to take photos of the Justice before she sat down. These were then swiftly uploaded to Instagram.

Regardless, the opportunity to watch a Supreme Court Justice speak is not one that presents itself every day, and UVA students are a privileged bunch to have a personal visit. But perhaps no more privileged than, for instance, someone who happened to find Justice Jackson engaged in the same conversation at Politics and Prose Bookstore.

Justice Jackson is one of several recently appointed Supreme Court Justices to release books. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law was released in 2024, and Justice Barrett’s Listening to the Law was released earlier this month, on September 9. Both of them have been on the book tour as well, in addition to former Justice Breyer who stopped by UVA Law last year to promote his fourth book, Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism. Hopefully the Justices will find an excuse to visit Charlottesville again soon. Possibly even without their cart of wares in tow.