Amy Howe

Jun 29 2022

Jackson will be sworn in on Thursday as Breyer steps down

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will be sworn in as the newest Supreme Court justice at noon on Thursday, June 30. She will become the first Black woman ever to serve on the court.

Jackson will replace Justice Stephen Breyer, who announced Wednesday in a letter to President Joe Biden that he will make his retirement official and step down on Thursday. The 83-year-old Breyer announced in January that he would retire when the Supreme Court begins its summer recess. With the court poised to issue its final two decisions on Thursday at 10 a.m., Breyer wrote, his retirement “will be effective on Thursday, June 30, 2022, at noon.”

In a month in which Breyer dissented in several blockbuster cases – overturning the constitutional right to an abortion, expanding the scope of the Second Amendment, and upholding an increased role for religion in public life — he added that it had been his “great honor to participate as a judge in the effort to maintain our Constitution and the Rule of Law.”

In April, the Senate confirmed Jackson, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to succeed Breyer.

Supreme Court justices take two oaths of office. Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the “constitutional oath” to Jackson, and Breyer will administer the “judicial oath,” the court said. The swearing-in ceremony will be livestreamed at www.supremecourt.gov.

This post is also published on SCOTUSblog.

Amy L Howe
Until September 2016, Amy served as the editor and reporter for SCOTUSblog, a blog devoted to coverage of the Supreme Court of the United States; she continues to serve as an independent contractor and reporter for SCOTUSblog. Before turning to full-time blogging, she served as counsel in over two dozen merits cases at the Supreme Court and argued two cases there. From 2004 until 2011, she co-taught Supreme Court litigation at Stanford Law School; from 2005 until 2013, she co-taught a similar class at Harvard Law School. She has also served as an adjunct professor at American University’s Washington College of Law and Vanderbilt Law School. Amy is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holds a master’s degree in Arab Studies and a law degree from Georgetown University.
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