Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson makes her Broadway debut
More Of This
“We Have Dreams”
Why She Did It
Few would be surprised to hear a Supreme Court justice speak about having childhood dreams, but one particular item Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson checked off her list this weekend might raise an eyebrow or two.
Jackson made her Broadway debut Saturday with a one-night-only role in the jukebox musical “& Juliet,” which, according to Playbill, “flips the script on the William Shakespeare classic, imagining what would happen next if Juliet hadn’t ended it all over Romeo.”
The Broadway production announced Jackson’s special appearance in an Instagram post last week, quoting her memoir “Lovely One,” which was released in September. In her book, Jackson writes about twin aspirations she disclosed in a Harvard application essay: first, “ascending to the highest court in the land,” and second, “to fulfill my fantasy of becoming the first Black, female Supreme Court justice to appear on a Broadway stage.”
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Montana Supreme Court reminds trans kids that judges can do good
Say It Louder
Last year, in both Tennessee and Montana, Republican lawmakers banned medical professionals from providing gender-affirming healthcare to transgender youths. Both statutes arose out of a nationwide effort by rightwing special interest groups to legally compel compliance with traditional gender norms. And both statutes now face constitutional challenges brought by trans kids and their families who reside in the states. But the two cases have some important distinctions.
In U.S. v. Skrmetti, trans youths are challenging the Tennessee law under the federal Constitution, before the U.S. Supreme Court. And in Cross v. Montana, trans youths are challenging the Montana law on state constitutional grounds, before the Montana Supreme Court. These differences—which constitution and which courtroom—are yielding dramatically different results.
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Black student enrollment at Harvard Law drops by 50%
Less Of This
The number of Black students entering Harvard Law School dropped sharply this fall after last year’s Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action in college admissions, according to enrollment data released on Monday.
Harvard Law enrolled 19 first-year Black students, or 3.4 percent of the class, the lowest number since the 1960s, according to the data from the American Bar Association. Last year, the law school’s first-year class had 43 Black students, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
While changes in data calculation might explain some year-to-year changes, the decline at Harvard was much sharper than at other elite law schools. It was notable not only for its severity but also because of the school’s past role in educating some of the nation’s best-known Black lawyers, including former President Barack Obama, the former first lady Michelle Obama, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and the former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick.
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