On September 20, 2012, President Obama nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, a former public defender and Supreme Court clerk, for a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The U.S. Senate confirmed Jackson on March 22, 2013.
Judge Jackson had served since 2010 as vice chair and commissioner of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an agency within the judiciary that sets sentencing policies and practices. President Obama nominated her for this position in 2009. Before her appointment to the sentencing commission, Jackson practiced law at Morrison & Foerster focusing on appellate litigation in state and federal courts and before the U.S. Supreme Court.
From 2005 until she joined Morrison in 2007, Jackson handled appeals as an assistant federal public defender in the District of Columia. Jackson previously served as an assistant special counsel at the Sentencing Commission and as an associate with two law firms, one specializing in white-collar criminal defense, the other focusing on the negotiated settlement of mass-tort claims.
Jackson also served as a law clerk to three federal judges, including Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States. She received an A.B., magna cum laude, in Government from Harvard-Radcliffe College, and a J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where she served as a supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Jackson is the first black woman appointed to the District’s federal court in 32 years and is only the second to serve on the bench.