Justice Jackson Unafraid to Speak Up, Go It Alone in First Term

Ketanji Brown Jackson wrapped up her first US Supreme Court term by excoriating conservative colleagues for voting to strike affirmative action in higher education, calling their decision detached “from this country’s actual past and present experiences.”

“With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat,” the court’s first Black female justice wrote in her dissent in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. “But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”

Her uncompromising style in that dissent was evident throughout her inaugural term, in which she skirted ...