Three Black Supreme Court justices have served in the Court’s history: Thurgood Marshall, Clarence Thomas, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Marshall was the first, confirmed in 1967 after a career as the country’s leading civil rights litigator. Thomas succeeded him in 1991 and is now the longest-serving member of the current Court. Jackson joined in 2022 as the first Black woman ever to sit on the bench. Their legal philosophies, professional paths, and signature opinions differ sharply, and understanding each one on its own terms is the only way to make sense of what they share.
Thurgood Marshall: The First Black Justice
Thurgood Marshall reached the Supreme Court after building one of the most consequential legal careers in American history. Starting in 1940, he founded and led the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, personally overseeing hundreds of cases challenging racial segregation across the South. He won 29 of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court, and the press called him “Mr. Civil Rights.”1National Archives. National Archives Display Marks 50th Anniversary of The First African American Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall2United States Courts. Justice Thurgood Marshall Profile – Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment
The Cases That Made Him
In Smith v. Allwright (1944), Marshall persuaded the Court to strike down the Texas Democratic Party’s practice of barring Black citizens from voting in primary elections. The ruling held that when a state structures its elections around party primaries, allowing a party to exclude voters by race is state-sponsored discrimination under the Fifteenth Amendment.3Justia. Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944) Marshall later called it his most important case. By 1952, roughly one million Black voters had registered across the one-party South.
A decade later came his best-known victory. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Marshall led the legal team that convinced the Court to declare racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, overturning the “separate but equal” doctrine that had stood since Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.4National Archives. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) Other wins struck down racially restrictive housing covenants and forced the integration of state universities. Together, this work dismantled much of the legal machinery of Jim Crow before Congress passed a single major civil rights bill.
Solicitor General, Then the Court
President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall as Solicitor General in 1965, making him the first Black person to serve as the federal government’s top lawyer before the Supreme Court.5Department of Justice. Solicitor General: Thurgood Marshall Two years later, Johnson nominated him to the Court itself.1National Archives. National Archives Display Marks 50th Anniversary of The First African American Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall
Over 24 years on the bench, Marshall pushed the Court to read the Constitution as a document that must evolve to protect people with the least political power. He wrote the majority opinion in Mempa v. Rhay (1967), which established that criminal defendants have a right to counsel during sentencing hearings under the Sixth Amendment.6Justia. Mempa v. Rhay, 389 U.S. 128 (1967) He was an unwavering opponent of the death penalty. In his concurrence in Furman v. Georgia (1972), he argued that capital punishment was inherently excessive and violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. As the Court shifted rightward in his later years, he dissented frequently in criminal cases where he believed the majority was weakening protections for the accused. He retired in 1991.1National Archives. National Archives Display Marks 50th Anniversary of The First African American Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall
Clarence Thomas: The Longest-Serving Current Justice
Clarence Thomas came to the Court from a career in the executive branch, not civil rights litigation. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1974, he worked in the Missouri Attorney General’s office, then in the U.S. Department of Education. President Reagan appointed him chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1982, and he led the EEOC for eight years, longer than anyone before or since.7U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Clarence Thomas
In 1990, President George H.W. Bush nominated him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. A year later, Bush elevated him to the Supreme Court to fill Marshall’s seat.7U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Clarence Thomas The confirmation hearings became one of the most contentious in the Court’s history after Anita Hill, a former colleague at the EEOC, testified that Thomas had subjected her to repeated sexual harassment. The televised hearings turned the confirmation into a national debate about workplace harassment, race, and power. Thomas was confirmed 52–48, one of the narrowest margins for a successful Supreme Court nomination.
Originalism and Precedent
Thomas is the Court’s most committed originalist. He interprets the Constitution based on the public meaning its text carried when it was adopted, looking to founding-era documents, historical practice, and the intent of the framers rather than evolving societal standards. That approach frequently leads him to favor a limited federal role, a narrow reading of the Commerce Clause, and skepticism toward judge-made doctrines with no clear grounding in the text.
His view of precedent stands out even among originalists. In his concurrence in Gamble v. United States (2019), Thomas argued that the Court’s approach to stare decisis had become a “loose, judicial test” that let judges preserve rulings they liked while discarding ones they didn’t. When a prior decision is “demonstrably erroneous” under the Constitution’s original meaning, he wrote, the Court has a duty to correct it regardless of how long the decision has stood. Significant reliance interests could sometimes justify keeping a flawed precedent, but mere longevity is not enough.8Legal Information Institute. Gamble v. United States
Bruen and the Second Amendment
Thomas wrote the majority opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (2022), one of the most significant Second Amendment decisions in the Court’s history. The opinion replaced the two-step framework lower courts had been using to evaluate gun regulations with a new test rooted entirely in history. Under Bruen, when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers a person’s conduct, the government can justify restricting it only by showing that the regulation is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation.9Supreme Court of the United States. New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen Courts now compare modern gun laws against historical analogues, asking whether they impose a comparable burden on self-defense for a comparably justified reason. A regulation doesn’t have to be identical to a historical predecessor, but it must fit within the same tradition.
Thomas is also known for a striking personal practice. For roughly a decade beginning in 2006, he asked no questions during oral arguments, relying instead on written briefs. He broke that silence in 2016, and the format used during the COVID-19 era, where justices take turns, has made him a more regular participant. Having joined the Court on October 23, 1991, he is by far the longest-serving current justice.10Justia. Justice Clarence Thomas
Ketanji Brown Jackson: The First Black Woman on the Court
Ketanji Brown Jackson brought a professional background unlike any justice in decades. After graduating from Harvard Law School, she spent two years as a federal public defender, representing people who could not afford a lawyer. That experience made her the first former federal public defender on the Supreme Court and the first justice since Marshall with significant criminal defense experience.
Jackson also served as assistant special counsel and later vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the independent agency responsible for federal sentencing guidelines. During her time as vice chair, the Commission voted to apply the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 retroactively. That law had reduced the disparity between sentences for crack and powder cocaine offenses, changing what had been a 100-to-1 ratio to 18-to-1.11U.S. Sentencing Commission. 2015 Report to the Congress: Impact of the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 Making the change retroactive meant roughly 12,000 people already in prison became eligible to seek reduced sentences.
Confirmation and Early Tenure
President Joe Biden nominated Jackson to fill the vacancy created by Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement. The Senate confirmed her on April 7, 2022, by a vote of 53–47, making her the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court in its 233-year history.12United States Senate. Roll Call Vote 117th Congress – 2nd Session Before her nomination to the high court, she had served as a federal district court judge and on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Her early years on the bench reflect her background in criminal defense and sentencing policy. She is an active questioner during oral arguments, and her opinions tend to focus closely on statutory text and procedural fairness. Her perspective as someone who has represented defendants, not just judged them, adds a dimension to the Court’s deliberations that had been absent for a long time.
What Ties the Three Together, and What Doesn’t
The three justices share the historical fact of being firsts, and each has been shaped by that fact in the public imagination. Beyond that, the resemblance ends. Marshall spent his career suing to expand federal power to protect civil rights, then joined a Court where he pushed constitutional interpretation toward evolving protections for the powerless. Thomas built his career inside the federal government’s civil rights machinery, then joined the Court as its most consistent voice for originalism and a narrower federal role. Jackson brings the perspective of someone who defended criminal defendants and helped write federal sentencing policy, a professional profile no other current justice has. Reading their opinions side by side is a reminder that shared history does not produce shared jurisprudence.