US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was honoured with the Law Society’s Praeses Elit Award on the 22nd of September 2025, in front of a packed audience at the Exam Hall. The event drew a large crowd of students, faculty, and guests, many of whom queued early to secure a seat. From the enthusiastic applause as Jackson entered the room to the energy during the Q&A, the atmosphere reflected both the prestige of the occasion and the eagerness of students to hear from one of the most prominent jurists of our time.
Ketanji Brown Jackson is the most recently appointed US Supreme Court Judge, appointed by former US President Joe Biden in June of 2022. She is the first African American woman ever to assume this important title in US legal affairs.
The Praeses Elit award was founded by former auditor of DU Law Society, Mary Robinson, a trailblazer in the advancement of women in law and politics, and therefore, as a persistent activist for the advancement and success of women and people of colour in the legal profession, Brown Jackson has now joined an elite club of legal trailblazers. Previous recipients include Chief Justice Donal O’Donnell, Mr Jean Claude Juncker, Baroness Hale, Lord Reed, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, President of the Court of Justice for the European Union Koen Lenaerts, Sir Stephen Fry, and Sir Bob Geldof.
“I am humbled to join the ranks”, and this is a “signal that Trinity College is watching me and… is proud of the work done thus far”, Brown Jackson said in receipt of the award.
She laughed and said, people often ask her, “What do you want your legacy to be?”
She wants to be known for being “firmly committed to the essential duty of a jurist of the United States and to protect the Constitution”, and its values of democracy and liberty and justice for all.
Brown Jackson wants to follow in the footsteps of the prominent African-American Civil rights activist, Dorothy Height, who famously said, “I want to be remembered as someone who used herself and anything she could touch to work for justice and freedom… I want to be remembered as one who tried.”
Brown Jackson also credits her parents and the year in which she was born as factors which led to her success.
She mentioned that 1970, the year she was born, was only a few years after the enactment of the Civil Rights Laws and the end of the Jim Crow laws, which segregated the US population based on skin colour until 1965.
Her parents wanted to give her the “shot” that they were not able to have. Her earliest memories are of her and her father, when he went back to being a student, sitting around the kitchen table: “[he] had his law books and I had my colouring books”, spurring the audience to laugh warmly. She noted this was during a period when her mother was a teacher and the main household earner at the time. This was one of the influences on her journey to becoming a lawyer. Her parents told her that she could do anything that she wanted to do.
Jackson Brown is often cited as one of the three liberal judges out of the nine judges on the US Supreme Court. More often than not, her desired ruling does not come to fruition. For example, in July of this year, she dissented from the Court’s majority, allowing US President Trump’s administration to limit the size of the US federal government, arguing it was “inconsistent with congressional mandates,” according to CNN News.
In making her decisions, Brown Jackson makes sure to try to understand the context and reasoning surrounding the enactment of a certain law by Congress, and to uphold that understanding.
In another dissent, Brown Jackson says that “this administration always wins.” It seems to be the case that the US government has had to act on presidential executive orders without judicial injunction during Trump’s second term.
It is, therefore, no wonder that she finds that “the Supreme Court can be a little isolated”.
Brown Jackson is very clear on her legal role: that only when there is controversy around the context of a case, she is required and permitted to “navigate (her) frustration by writing about it.”
The late Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist who was killed in Utah on September 10th of this year, said that “She’s [Brown Jackson] only on the Supreme Court because of affirmative action” on his show in 2023. This is an idea often shared by other right-wing influencers.
Brown Jackson worked her way up to her current position from editor of the Harvard Review, being a judge at the trial level for seven and a half years, to the regional appeals courts and beyond. She is also the only federal judge to have been a public defender, and she draws from this experience, making sure that those she defends feel respected in the process and that the “purpose of punishment is to reform.”
“People are watching..I don’t think it bothers me”, she says.
She reflected on the pressures of being the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. “As a first, people are curious as to whether or not I’m able to do this job…” she admitted.
Reflecting on her place in history and on those in a similar position, who came before her, she frames her pressure as inseparable from the privilege of her job. She refers to Judge Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman appointed to the federal bench in the 1960s, who had argued and won landmark civil rights cases before the Supreme Court, but was never considered for such a role herself. She adds, “I am the first Black woman to be a justice, but I’m not the first Black woman who could have been on the Supreme Court… My getting to finally realise that dream, after so many people were denied, is extraordinary”, she said.
Jackson also reflected on the power and limits of student activism, drawing on her own experiences at Harvard. She recalled protests led by the Black Students Association after a Confederate flag was hung on campus, and the tension between taking a stand and keeping up with academic demands. “Protest is a form of participation… Student activism is very important… but you have to pick and choose your battles,” she said. Quoting author Toni Morrison, she warned that racism and discrimination can act as distractions, tormenting students away from the work they must do to succeed. Her advice to the Trinity audience was to see activism as essential, but to remember that achievement itself can also be a form of resistance.
Brown Jackson wrote in her college essay applying to Harvard that she wanted “to be the first African-American woman Justice and to [also] appear on a Broadway stage.”
She has done all of that and more.
