Make wishtv.com your home page

Law school recruiter: Ketanji Brown Jackson nomination could draw more students of color

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A law school recruiter says it’s hard to overstate the importance of seeing someone who looks like her in the running for a seat on the nation’s highest court.

Nicole Burts is the assistant director of student recruitment for the IUPUI McKinney School of Law.

Burts says she, as a Black woman in the field of law, can identify with the struggles Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson detailed during her confirmation hearings for the United States Supreme Court. She says Jackson’s story of another Black woman on the Harvard law school campus encouraging her to persevere resonated with her.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine on Wednesday became the first Republican senator to endorse Jackson. Coupled with the public backing of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., this effectively guarantees Jackson will be confirmed by the full Senate without needing a tiebreaker vote by Vice President Kamala Harris. Burts says this brings a sense of security to the nomination process.

“There’s just so many trailblazers running through my head and a sense of emotions overall,” Burts said. “Just a historic moment.”

Burts says some of the scrutiny Jackson faced was painful to watch. She says women in traditionally male-dominated spaces face immense pressure not to show emotion, lest they be perceived as irrational, and Black women in particular often are accused of being angry or hostile. She believes Jackson did an excellent job handling those pressures.

Statistics show the nation’s courts remain heavily white and male. Jackson would become just the third Black justice and the sixth woman justice in the high court’s history.

According to a 2021 report by the Brennan Center for Justice, people of color make up 40% of the nation’s population, but account for 17% of the justices serving on state supreme courts. Twenty-eight states have no Black supreme court justices. Burt says about 5% of the nation’s lawyers are Black, even though Black Americans make up 13.4% of the population.

Burts says she witnesses the impact of inclusivity every day in her work, often getting thank-you notes and calls from students of color who are considering attending IUPUI.

“Before we get folks to the bar, before we get them to the bench, we have get them through legal education,” Burts said. “And so I think this helps a lot of our students focus on the end goal and opportunities, but I think, for us, it creates really just the opportunity to not only encourage students, but to show at the highest level the possibilities and continue to build the pipeline of legal education to be inclusive.”