Supreme Court docket Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made her Broadway debut within the jukebox musical “& Juliet” Saturday night time, making her the primary justice to hit the Nice White Means.
“I just always loved theater, and I felt very comfortable on stage,” she instructed CBS’ Vladimir Duthiers.
And the justice’s consolation on stage was obvious as she belted out, “Female empowerment—sick,” whereas making a shaka hand gesture.
Appointed by President Joe Biden in 2022, Jackson instructed CBS that she had a ardour for each theater and debate throughout her faculty years. These pursuits led her to pursue regulation and in the end helped earn her a seat on our nation’s highest court docket.
However the first Black lady to serve on the Supreme Court docket additionally desires to “remind people” that justices are “human beings” who additionally “have dreams.”
“We are public servants,” she stated earlier than including that the jurists “are not so detached from the people that we serve.”
“& Juliet” is a wildly well-liked musical that reimagines what might need occurred if Juliet in Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet” didn’t kill herself. The present has a powerful message of feminine empowerment and gender nonconformity—messages that Jackson instructed CBS are “wonderful.”
Jackson has been outspoken about her assist for girls’s rights, notably criticizing her Republican-majority colleagues for dismissing a case over whether or not a state can ban abortions to guard ladies’s well being.
Extra lately, the liberal justice appeared to facet with transgender folks’s rights within the historic U.S. v. Skrmetti case, which is awaiting a ruling.
Whereas Jackson has been spending her free time hitting the coveted stage and residing out her lifelong dream, different justices’ extracurricular actions haven’t been as tasteful and cultured.
In April 2023, ProPublica printed a brutal report detailing Justice Clarence Thomas’ intensive historical past of accepting lavish holidays from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow.
Over time, Thomas has taken benefit of Crow’s non-public jet, superyacht, non-public Adirondacks resort, and extra.
In the meantime, fellow conservative Justice Samuel Alito has additionally accepted secret luxurious holidays from conservative donors and thrown his spouse underneath the bus for flying the identical flags as Jan. rioters and Christian nationalists exterior his houses.
Whichever approach these justices is likely to be spending their free time (or freebies), Jackson instructed CBS that she hopes folks see a lesson in her taking the stage.
“Don’t give up and don’t be deterred—and again, anything is possible,” she stated.
