Ketanji Brown Jackson Memoir Is Out. I Won’t Be Reading It.

Ketanji Brown Jackson has written a book. Her first offering is a memoir titled: Lovely One.

According to AP:

Jackson, 53, is using the book, publisher Random House says, to trace her family’s rise from segregation to her confirmation as the first Black woman on the nation’s highest court in the span of one generation. “It is the story of the promise of America,” she said in a television interview that aired Sunday. 

She also is the first public defender to serve as a justice and she delves into advancing in the legal profession as a woman of color and a mother balancing a demanding career and family life. 

It seems oddly appropriate for AP to employ clunky prose and use “woman” twice when writing about Jackson’s memoir. Confirmed in 2022, Jackson is the most junior member of the Supreme Court. She embarrassed herself during her confirmation hearing when she couldn’t define “woman” because, she said, she “isn’t a biologist.” Jackson had little trouble talking about everything else but got stuck on the basics of high school biology and human existence.

Jackson was selected because she is a woman – and because she is black. That isn’t my “dissenting opinion,” it was the stated reason why Joe Biden selected her. Jackson was on the shortlist and was nominated because of two inimitable characteristics. Her legal acumen was a side issue. After Jackson took her seat on the highest court, she quickly distinguished herself as a talker. She talked, a lot. By July 2023, after less than a year on the bench, Jackson has eclipsed all other justices during oral arguments in terms of talk time. In the 58 cases heard, Jackson talked at length — over 75,000 words, and not all of them productive. Maybe her talking was fodder for her memoir. 

During oral arguments on race-based preference cases, Jackson discussed what the “Framers” were thinking when the 14th Amendment was drafted. Perhaps she was channeling ghosts because all the Framers were dead when the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868. After all her talking was done, Jackson was at her desk drafting dissents. In her first dissent, Jackson wrote about race-based discrimination in college admissions: 

“This contention blinks both history and reality in ways too numerous to count. But the response is simple: Our country has never been colorblind. Given the lengthy history of state-sponsored race-based preferences in America, to say that anyone is now victimized if a college considers whether that legacy of discrimination has unequally advantaged its applicants fails to acknowledge the well-documented “intergenerational transmission of inequality” that still plagues our citizenry.” 

The New York Times published an OpEd to contextualize and explain what Jackson meant by “blinks both history and reality.” Phrasing that needs 1,000 words to explain is useless verbiage.

Jackson’s memoir seems to be the cart before the horse. She’s been on the bench for barely two years. AP reports that her book discusses her “rise from segregation.” Her parents were both successful professionals. Her dad was lead counsel for a school district, and her mother was a school principal. In contrast, Clarence Thomas wrote about his rise from dire “dirt floor” poverty, and Thomas waited decades after his appointment to the Supreme Court to write it.

I don’t fault Jackson for taking her $900,000 advance and writing about her life, but I have little interest in reading her memoir. I’ve read few books by Supreme Court Justices. Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are worthy subjects, but I’m afraid I’ll “blink” at Jackson’s memoir.