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This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Since the founding of this country, just 116 people have served as Supreme Court justices.

The 116th is Justice Katanji Brown Jackson, who was appointed by President Biden in 2022.

Jackson's two years have been marked by major decisions that define a new conservative era

for the court. She took her seat just days after the Dobbs decision, which overturned

Roe v. Wade. Jackson wrote a blistering dissent to the end of affirmative action, the so-called Harvard decision,

and she dissented as well on presidential immunity, which is surely going to be one of the most

consequential cases of our time. She didn't pull her punches there. Jackson wrote that the majority

opinion took risks with presidential power that are, and I'm quoting here,

intolerable, unwarranted, and plainly antithetical to bedrock constitutional norms.

Katanji Brown-Jackson has just published a memoir about her family, her early life,

and how she got to the highest position in American law.

The book is called Lovely One.

Tell me a little bit about receiving the news of your becoming a Supreme Court Justice.

Paint a picture for us, if you will, about how that news was received and what was said

and how it was celebrated.

Oh, well, goodness. Wow. It was incredible. But, you know, one of the things your listeners

should know is that there's a pretty long lead-up to getting appointed to be on the Supreme

Court or any other court because you have to be vetted by the

White House. You have to go through a long period of answering questions and filling out paperwork.

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