Tag Archives: supreme court

Female Power Project, perSISTERS designs

RISE for Ketanji Brown Jackson

RISE for Ketanji Brown Jackson, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project.
Purchase this print in the store.

Here is a perSISTERS design for our newest Supreme Court Justice who is the first Black woman to be appointed to be a judge on the highest court in the United States.

DESIGN NOTES

I tell people I don’t do “firsts” unless there is a particular power or message involved. So I wasn’t inclined to do a piece for Ketanji Brown Jackson just because she will be our first Black woman Supreme Court justice. However, I have received an extraordinary number of requests so I know there is something important going on there. Granted, I live and work in an area with more lawyers than any other location in the U.S., and a substantial number of African American people. But still.

I try to stay positive in my perSISTERS works so I will not use space here to address in any detail the bizarre—but not unexpected—performance of Republican Senators during the confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. I will say that Jackson gave an impeccable performance during this ordeal. She held to her message on her professional principles, principles that should not be controversial: the rule of law and equal protection under the law.

The main message that I find to foreground in a perSISTERS print is rarely a direct quote. Here I have woven in text from Jackson’s recent speeches, but the large message I found, RISE, is not the obvious one you will see in other works made for Ketanji Brown Jackson. The most obvious message is PERSEVERE, which is the explicit message she has said she would give to young people. (See Jackson answer Senator Padilla’s question here: https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/judge-jackson-s-advice-to-students-facing-challenges-persevere-136102981509). 

The thing is, all of the persisters are who they are because they have persevered. The series is pretty much named for that. I have three print designs that use the words, “Nevertheless she persisted.” Also, as a writer and typographer, I just don’t like the word “persevere.” I don’t like the sound, and I don’t like how it looks. So I studied the contexts within her speeches and I found some things that were more interesting, for me. 

Let’s look at the context of Jackson’s “persevere” message. This is a condensed quote, and it appears on the print. She is answering Padilla’s question, What would you say to all those young Americans, the most diverse in our nation’s history, what would you say if they doubt they can achieve the same great heights that you have:

I will tell them what an anonymous person said to me once, as I was walking through Harvard Yard my freshman year. … I was really questioning, do I belong here? Can I make it in this environment? And I was walking through the Yard in the evening, and a Black woman I did not know was passing me on the sidewalk. And she looked at me and I guess she knew how I was feeling. She leaned over as we crossed and said, “Persevere.”

For me, the great message in this statement is that in a crucial time in her life, it was the empathic statement of a stranger that gave Jackson some courage, enough so that she never forgot this encounter. I’m sure Jackson had been told to persevere previously, but it was this context that gave it particular weight. It was a gift. A gift from a person with similar ancestry and experience. And in this hearing, answering Mr. Padilla’s question, Ketanji Brown Jackson is re-gifting that message. 

I tried to think of a way to put this idea into the one or two big words I put on the prints, but it is too complicated. So I used imagery to communicate this. The pattern in the background is often called the “flower of life” and to me it communicates interconnectedness. (I have used this motif in scarf designs to communicate the way Virginia Woolf intersects the consciousnesses of her characters in her novel, Mrs. Dalloway.)

Ketanji Brown Jackson returns to the gifting idea in the speech she gave at the White House after her confirmation. An excerpt appears in the background on the print. The larger message she is trying to convey is that she is situated in history and history is showing that anything is possible in America (“We have come a long way toward perfecting our union.”) She speaks about how, even though she worked very hard, she could not be a role model herself if she hadn’t been standing on the shoulders of her own role models. She is speaking about the monumental achievements—in just a few generations—of African Americans in this country. Near the end of the speech, she quotes from the poem, “And Still I Rise,”  an amazing poem about Black female persistence and power. This is from the transcript the White House published online:

To be sure, I have worked hard to get to this point in my career, and I have now achieved something far beyond anything my grandparents could’ve possibly ever imagined.  But no one does this on their own.  The path was cleared for me so that I might rise to this occasion. 

And in the poetic words of Dr. Maya Angelou, I do so now, while “Bringing the gifts…my ancestors gave.”  (Applause.)  I –“I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”  (Applause.)

So this is where the message “RISE” comes from. It is a force of justice through history and a gift that can be shared. Also, it’s the thing you do when a judge walks into that room that is dedicated to the ceremonies of justice.

A NOTE ON THE COLORS

The color harmonies in this piece are based on the color of the spines of the law books appearing behind Ms. Jackson in the photo referenced (and changed) that can be found here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:10.18.2019,_Ketanji_Jackson.jpg   released under a creative commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en  The photographer has no responsibility for my artwork.

MORE LINKS

Excerpt: https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/in-ketanji-brown-jackson-s-success-a-lesson-in-what-is-possible-in-a-democracy-137363525966

Full White House speech: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2022/04/08/ketanji-brown-jackson-supreme-court-celebration-full-speech-sot-vpx.cnn

“And Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou https://poets.org/poem/still-i-rise

. . .

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

Ketanji Brown Jackson (born Ketanji Onyika Brown; September 14, 1970) is an American attorney and jurist who has served as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2021. She has been confirmed as the next associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Jackson received Senate confirmation on April 7, 2022. When she is sworn in she will be the first black woman to sit on the Supreme Court.

Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Miami, Florida, Jackson attended Harvard University for college and law school, where she served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. She began her legal career with three clerkships, including one with U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer. Prior to her elevation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, she served as a district judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia from 2013 to 2021. Jackson was also vice chair of the United States Sentencing Commission from 2010 to 2014. Jackson worked in private legal practice from 2000 to 2003. From 2003 to 2005, she was an assistant special counsel to the United States Sentencing Commission. From 2005 to 2007, Jackson was an assistant federal public defender in Washington, D.C., where she handled cases before U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. From 2007 to 2010, Jackson was an appellate specialist at a law firm.

Based on Wikipedia 

Female Power Project, perSISTERS designs

DISIENTO for Sonia Sotomayor

DISIENTO (“I DISSENT”) for Sonya Sotomayor, a perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project

Sonia Maria Sotomayor (born June 25, 1954) is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 26, 2009 and has served since August 8, 2009. She is the third woman to hold the position. Sotomayor is the first woman of color, first Hispanic, and first Latina member of the Court. Sotomayor was born in The Bronx, New York City, to Puerto Rican-born parents. Sotomayor graduated with honors from Princeton University in 1976 and received her law degree from Yale Law School in 1979. –Wikipedia

DESIGN NOTE
I have been pondering a design for Sonia Sotomayor for several years. I was impressed with her compassion, drive, and brilliance after reading her 2013 memoir. However, it was not clear to me what words to use for her “power.” I had thought to use “LISTEN” but was disuaded by someone who used to work for her who told me that Sotomayor is notorious for interrupting people. Sigh. Then recently someone came in to my Female Power hut at Eastern Market and, looking at my RBG “DISSENT” button, told me, “I would love a button with Sotomayor on it that says ‘DISSENT.”’ (She was refering to the dissent quoted below.) “Especially if it were in Spanish!” Well, I know a good idea when I hear one, and this also solved the problem I’ve stated above. I’m starting with a perSISTER print, and a button will be coming. 

I found three ways to say “I dissent” in Spanish, and a lawyer friend helped me find the official judicial phrasing by looking up Supreme Court decisions published in Puerto Rico. 

I found out that the Supreme Court publishes their decisions using the typeface Century Schoolbook, so that is the face I used to typeset the dissent appearing behind the judge in this print. The text reads:

The court’s order is stunning. Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.

Last night, the court silently acquiesced in a state’s enactment of a law that flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents. Today, the court belatedly explains that it declined to grant relief because of procedural complexities of the state’s own invention. Because the court’s failure to act rewards tactics designed to avoid judicial review and inflicts significant harm on the applicants and on women seeking abortions in Texas, I dissent.

In May 2021, the Texas legislature enacted SB8 (the act). The act, which took effect statewide at midnight on 1 September, makes it unlawful for physicians to perform abortions if they either detect cardiac activity in an embryo or fail to perform a test to detect such activity. This equates to a near-categorical ban on abortions beginning six weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period, before many women realize they are pregnant, and months before fetal viability. According to the applicants, who are abortion providers and advocates in Texas, the act immediately prohibits care for at least 85% of Texas abortion patients and will force many abortion clinics to close.

The act is clearly unconstitutional under existing precedents. The respondents do not even try to argue otherwise. Nor could they: no federal appellate court has upheld such a comprehensive prohibition on abortions before viability under current law.

The Texas legislature was well aware of this binding precedent. To circumvent it, the legislature took the extraordinary step of enlisting private citizens to do what the state could not. The act authorizes any private citizen to file a lawsuit against any person who provides an abortion in violation of the act, “aids or abets” such an abortion (including by paying for it) regardless of whether they know the abortion is prohibited under the act, or even intends to engage in such conduct. Courts are required to enjoin the defendant from engaging in these actions in the future and to award the private-citizen plaintiff at least $10,000 in “statutory damages” for each forbidden abortion performed or aided by the defendant. In effect, the Texas legislature has deputized the state’s citizens as bounty hunters, offering them cash prizes for civilly prosecuting their neighbors’ medical procedures.

The legislature fashioned this scheme because federal constitutional challenges to state laws ordinarily are brought against state officers who are in charge of enforcing. By prohibiting state officers from enforcing the act directly and relying instead on citizen bounty hunters, the legislature sought to make it more complicated for federal courts to enjoin the act on a statewide basis.

Taken together, the act is a breathtaking act of defiance—of the constitution, of this court’s precedents, and of the rights of women seeking abortions throughout Texas. But over six weeks after the applicants filed suit to prevent the act from taking effect, a fifth circuit panel abruptly stayed all proceedings before the district court and vacated a preliminary injunction hearing that was scheduled to begin on Monday. The applicants requested emergency relief from this court, but the court said nothing. The act took effect at midnight last night.

From Justice Sotomayor’s dissent in Whole Woman’s Health et al v Austin Reeve Jackson, Judge, et al, on application for injunctive relief. She was joined by Justices Breyer and Kagan. This text has been lightly edited to remove some legal citations. This is quoted directly from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/02/sonia-sotomayor-dissent-texas-abortion-ban-law-supreme-court

This dissent, this case, this new “originalist” Supreme Court, is about much more than denying reproductive rights for women. The historian, Heather Cox Richardson, points out in her letter of September 3, 2021,  “A state has undermined the power of the federal government to protect civil rights. It has given individuals who disagree with one particular right the power to take it away from their neighbors. But make no mistake: there is no reason that this mechanism couldn’t be used to undermine much of the civil rights legislation of the post–World War II years.”

This print was published in September 2021.

FURTHER SOURCES
A good summary of her legal career so far:
“Sonia Sotomayor.” Oyez, www.oyez.org/justices/sonia_sotomayor. Accessed 24 Sep. 2021.

Memoir: My Beloved World, 2013.

The image of Sotomayor in this artwork is based on a photograph © Elena Seibert. The photographer does not have any responsibility for the message of this print.