Patrick G. Jackson: All You Need To Know About The Husband Of Ketanji Brown Jackson

American Jurist, Ketanji Brown Jackson was born on September 14th 1970 in Washington DC in the United States of America. She was born to Johnny Brown and Ellery Brown.

Early Life And Education

Ketanji, born Ketanji Onyika Brown, was raised by parents who both attended historically black institutions and universities. Her mother, Ellery, worked as the principal at the New World School of the Arts in Miami, Florida, while her father, Johnny Brown, continued his education at the University of Miami School of Law and eventually rose to the position of head attorney for the Miami-Dade County School Board. Jackson’s uncle, Thomas Brown Jr., was sentenced to life in prison in 1989 when she was a Harvard freshman for a misdemeanor cocaine case in which federal officers discovered 14 kilograms of cocaine wrapped in duct tape, according to court documents. Jackson eventually got President Barack Obama to commute his sentence when he persuaded a law firm to take his case on a pro bono basis years later.  Calvin Ross, a different relative, was Miami’s police chief. Jackson was raised near Miami, Florida, and went to Miami Palmetto Senior High. She earned the national oratory championship in the National Catholic Forensic League championships in New Orleans during her senior year. In 1988, she earned her degree from Miami Palmetto.

Jackson applied to Harvard University despite the recommendation of her high school guidance counselor to set her sights lower, and she later studied government there. Jackson participated in improv comedy shows, studied acting, and led demonstrations against a fellow student who flew a Confederate flag from his dorm window while he was a student at Harvard. Jackson earned his A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard in 1992. The Hand of Oppression: Plea Bargaining Processes and the Coercion of Criminal Defendants was the title of her senior thesis. From 1992 to 1993, Jackson worked as a staff reporter and researcher for Time magazine. She subsequently attended Harvard Law School and served as the Harvard Law Review’s supervising editor. She received her Juris Doctor cum laude in 1996.

Career

After graduating from law school, Jackson worked as a law clerk for judges Bruce M. Selya of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit from 1997 to 1998 and Patti B. Saris of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts from 1996 to 1997. She worked as a private attorney for a year at the Washington, D.C., legal firm Miller Cassidy Larroca & Lewin (now a division of Baker Botts), then from 1999 to 2000 she served as a law clerk to Justice Stephen Breyer of the US Supreme Court. Jackson practiced law from 2000 to 2003, first at the Goodwin Procter law firm from 2000 to 2002 and then alongside Kenneth Feinberg at the firm that is now known as Feinberg & Rozen LLP from 2002 to 2003. She served as the US Sentencing Commission’s assistant special counsel from 2003 to 2005. Jackson worked as an assistant federal public defender in Washington, D.C., from 2005 to 2007, where she represented clients in matters before the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Jackson earned unusual victories against the government that resulted in the government’s lengthy prison sentences being reduced or eliminated, according to a Washington Post analysis of the cases she handled while working as a public defender. Jackson worked as a private practice appellate expert at Morrison & Foerster from 2007 through 2010.

Jackson is a member of the Council of the American Law Institute, the Board of Overseers of Harvard University, and the Judicial Conference Committee on Defender Services. She now holds positions on the boards of the United States Supreme Court Fellows Commission and Georgetown Day School. She was on the advisory board of Baptist-affiliated Montrose Christian School from 2010 to 2011. Jackson has presided over multiple mock trials for the Historical Society of the District of Columbia’s Mock Court Program and the Shakespeare Theatre Company. In 2018, the Thomas R. Kline School of Law at Drexel University held a mock trial “to establish if Vice President Aaron Burr was guilty of murdering” Alexander Hamilton. Jackson presided over the trial.

Jackson spoke in 2017 at the 35th Edith House Lecture at the University of Georgia School of Law. Jackson took part in a panel discussion about Alexander Hamilton’s legacy in 2018 at the National Constitution Center. Jackson delivered the Martin Luther King Jr. Day lecture at the University of Michigan Law School in 2020, and the University of Chicago Law School’s Black Law Students Association presented the third annual Judge James B. Parsons Legacy Dinner in his honor.

Personal Life

In 1996, Brown married physician Patrick Graves Jackson who is a relative of American Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and a descendant of Continental Congress participant Jonathan Jackson. Leila and Talia are the daughters of the couple. Jackson is a protestant who is non-denominational.