Weeks into the job, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is already having a moment on the Supreme Court

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WASHINGTON – She's the newest member of an institution that reveres seniority, but Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson isn't waiting around to make her mark.

Two weeks after Jackson was formally welcomed to the Supreme Court, the former appeals court judge has established herself as an aggressive questioner, signed onto her first dissenting opinion and leapt into the fray  with conservatives over how to parse the Constitution's original meaning. 

Over the course of the first two weeks of arguments, Jackson spoke more than twice as many words as any of her colleagues, according to an analysis by Adam Feldman, the creator of the Empirical SCOTUS blog. But it wasn't the word count alone that captured the attention of court watchers, it was also the message Jackson has sought to convey.

In perhaps the most notable exchange at the court so far this term, Jackson pushed back on Alabama's position that the Constitution demands race neutrality when states go about redrawing congressional districts every decade. The history and tradition of the 14th Amendment, Jackson asserted, was about confronting racial discrimination.

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Ratified three years after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment guarantees Americans are treated equally under law. A version of that promise – "Equal Justice Under Law" – is inscribed in stone on the front of the Supreme Court building. 

"I don't think that the historical record establishes that the founders believed that race neutrality or race blindness was required," Jackson said during an exchange with Alabama's solicitor general, who was defending a map that includes one African American majority congressional district out of seven in the state. "The entire point of the amendment was to secure rights of the freed former slaves."

Jackson, the first African American woman to serve on the Supreme Court in its 233-year history, was driving at a broader point about constitutional interpretation. Conservatives have embraced originalism – reading the words of the Constitution as the framers might have understood them. Jackson's implicit message: That approach shouldn't always lead to an outcome that favors the conservative position. 

It's a debate almost certain to come up again later this month when the court considers race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. 

"It was stunning that it was her second day of oral arguments as a justice," said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley Law. "No one was more active in questioning. I also had the sense in that case that she was very conscious of her role as a Black justice and the importance of being a voice against discrimination and for remedies."

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The argument drew swift backlash from some conservatives who, while acknowledging the historical context, disagreed with Jackson's conclusions. Writing in the National Review, Carrie Severino, president of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, and attorney Frank Scaturro, argued that the debates over the Reconstruction amendments were filled with support for "abolishing racial distinctions in the law."

A day earlier, Jackson pressed an attorney battling with the Environmental Protection Agency over the Clean Water Act. As the justices debated which types of water should be covered under the act, Jackson cited the law's original purpose to essentially argue that the EPA should have the benefit of the doubt on where to draw that line. 

"Why is it that your conception of this does not relate in any way to Congress' primary objective?" Jackson asked. "Do you dispute that the primary objective as stated in the statute ... is that Congress cared about making sure that the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters was protected?"

Damien Schiff, arguing against the EPA, said that he didn't disagree but that "no statute pursues its purpose or its objective at all costs." In other words, policy objectives must be balanced against the harm they may cause others, like property owners. 

Jackson, 52, is one of two justice s with experience presiding over a trial court: The Miami native served for eight years as a U.S. district judge before President Joe Biden nominated her to the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2021. There may be a line that connects her work on the lower court with her approach on the highest. Speaking at a confirmation hearing in 2021, Jackson stressed the importance of clarity and ensuring that people understood her perspective.

Her remarks at the time were about communicating to criminal defendants. But they could just as easily apply to the public, observers said.  

Jackson "has such a teaching quality to her approach to the law, the deliberate way in which she explains and her level of preparedness," said Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women's Law Center. "I think it is a really beautiful and important offering to the public to help them understand the work of the court and the law in this moment."

So far, most of Jackson's positions seem to hew closely to the court's liberal wing in matters involving political power. If that bears out in her voting it means she will likely be in dissent in some of the court's biggest cases – one of three votes against the six conservative justices who have been in control of the court for the past two years.

Jackson on Tuesday joined with Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in a dissent from the court's decision to turn away an appeal from a Texas death row inmate who claimed he received an unfair trial because members of the jury opposed interracial marriage. Over the summer, Jackson sided with the Biden administration in a dispute over whether agents could prioritize certain immigrants for deportation. A 5-4 majority blocked the administration from enforcing that policy while the case is reviewed.

"This is such a pivotal term," Goss Graves said. "Having her voice and perspective there – you can already start to sort of question, why didn't we have a voice like hers there before?"