For Ketanji Brown Jackson, View of Criminal Justice Was Shaped by Family
The New York Times
The story of an uncle’s cocaine conviction formed only part of Judge Jackson’s understanding of the system’s complexities. She is now seen as a contender to be President Biden’s Supreme Court pick.
MIAMI — Ketanji Brown Jackson does not much talk about it, but when she was a college freshman, an uncle was sentenced to life in prison — a Black man, like so many others, handed a severe punishment during the war-on-drugs era.
The story of Thomas Brown’s cocaine conviction in the rough-and-tumble Miami of the 1980s formed only part of her early understanding of the criminal justice system’s complexities. Another uncle was Miami’s police chief. A third, a sex crimes detective. Her younger brother worked for the Baltimore police in undercover drug stings.
And then there is Judge Jackson, 51, whose peripatetic legal career, guided by the needs of marriage and motherhood, led her to big law firms, a federal public defender’s office, the United States Sentencing Commission and the federal bench, where she is widely seen as a contender to fulfill President Biden’s pledge to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court.
