Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is hitting the road to promote her new memoir, ‘Lovely One’
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is embarking on a high-profile, nationwide tour to promote her new memoir, “Lovely One.”
Jackson, 53, is using the book, publisher Random House said, 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 a generation. “It’s the story of the promise of America,” she said in a television interview that aired Sunday.
She is also the first public defender to serve as a judge, and she is committed to practicing law as a woman of color and a mother juggling a demanding career and family life.
Since joining the court in June 2022, Jackson has been the most active participant in oral arguments, according to the website Empirical Scotus. At times, she has taken a liberal approach to originalism, a method of interpreting the Constitution more often used by the court’s conservatives.
In her off-court appearances, she has embraced her role as a historian. On the day of her ceremonial swearing-in, she told the crowd that she “now has a seat at the table and is ready to get to work.”
Jackson kicks off the book tour on Tuesday at the Apollo Theater in New York, the same day the book is published.
In the first week alone, Jackson will hit major entertainment venues in Washington, Atlanta, Miami, Seattle and San Francisco.
She reported receiving an advance of nearly $900,000 from Random House last year, joining two colleagues, Justices Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor, who each received advances of $1 million or more for their memoirs.
Thomas’s up-from-poverty accounts of “My Grandfather’s Son” and Sotomayor’s “My Beloved World” topped The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. Sotomayor has earned about $4 million for the memoirs and children’s books she has written since joining the court in 2009.
Last year, The Associated Press reported reported that Sotomayor’s staff was heavily involved in organizing speaking engagements to sell the books and also encouraging colleges and universities to purchase them.
The court referred questions about Jackson’s book tour to her publisher.
The Supreme Court accepted its first code of conduct last year in response to ongoing criticism of secret trips and gifts from wealthy benefactors to some judges.
The code lacks an enforcement mechanism and places no limit on the income judges can earn from books they write. Other outside income, such as from teaching, is capped at about $30,000 a year. The justices are paid $298,500 this year for their work on the court, although Chief Justice John Roberts is paid slightly more.
“A binding code of ethics is pretty standard for judges,” Jackson told CBS’ Sunday Morning. “And so I guess the question is, ‘Is the Supreme Court any different?’ And I don’t think I’ve seen a compelling reason why it’s any different than any of the other courts.” She said she has “no problem with an enforceable code” and would consider supporting an enforcement mechanism “as a general matter,” but would not comment on “specific policy proposals.”
Democratic President Joe Biden has made a proposal enforceable code of ethics.
Jackson began writing the book shortly after taking office. The book’s title comes from the English translation of Ketanji Onyika, the name suggested by an aunt who was then a Peace Corps worker in West Africa.
“My parents really wanted to honor our heritage and asked her to send them a list of African names. And they chose that one, Lovely One, Ketanji Onyika, which is my middle name,” she told CBS.
Jackson was born in the District of Columbia and grew up in Miami. She traces her interest in the law to when she was in kindergarten and her father, Johnny Brown, was in law school and they would sit at the dinner table together, she with coloring books and he with law books. Her father became a lawyer for the county school board and her mother, Ellery Brown, was a high school principal. She has a brother, nine years younger, who served in the military, including in Iraq, and is now a lawyer.
Justice Neil Gorsuch has also been out and about this summer with his new book“Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law,” written with Janie Nitze, a former law clerk to Gorsuch. Gorsuch has reported receiving advances for the book totaling $500,000.
Yet another judge has a book in the works. Judge Amy Coney Barrett received $425,000 in 2021 as part of a book deal with Sentinel, a conservative imprint of Penguin Random House.