President Biden, first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff attended the investiture ceremony on Friday for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to sit on the Supreme Court.
The court held the ceremony behind closed doors. Jackson descended the front steps of the Supreme Court with Chief Justice John Roberts after the event.
Jackson’s husband, Patrick Jackson, then greeted her at the bottom of the Supreme Court steps before the pair returned inside the court.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was officially sworn into her role earlier this summer after Justice Stephen Breyer stepped down. The Supreme Court held a formal investiture ceremony for her on Friday ahead of its new term.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also attended the ceremony and emphasized the historical significance of the moment in remarks to reporters afterwards.
“There’s something like 109 members of the Supreme Court in our country’s history,” Pelosi said. “At long last, an African-American woman. It was pretty exciting.”
Attendance at investiture ceremonies is standard practice. Former President Trump and former first lady Melania Trump attended the ceremony for Justice Neil Gorsuch.
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Several White House officials also joined the president and first lady at the Supreme Court, including Chief of Staff Ron Klain and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
The ceremony happened just days before the court is scheduled to hear the first cases at the start of its new term on Monday. Jackson’s predecessor, Justice Stephen Breyer, stayed on until the end of the court’s most recent term, which ended early this summer.
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Jackson also attended her first “long conference” of her career as a justice on Wednesday. During that conference, the justices handle a backlog of work that came to them over the summer, including whether to hear a lengthy list of potential new cases.
Fox News’ Tara Prindiville and Bill Mears contributed to this report.
