Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson can add another first to her list: a bobblehead in her likeness!
The National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum in Milwaukee unveiled the figurine last week, which bears Brown Jackson’s likeness with crossed arms, a smile and bearing her black judge’s robe. The bobblehead stands in front of a replica of the Supreme Court, and is numbered with the year Brown Jackson was sworn in – 2022.
The museum hopes to honor the 51-year-old’s history-making ascension to the nation’s highest court, as she became the first Black woman to do so this past June.
In another history-making moment, it was vice president Kamala Harris – the first woman and first person of African American and Asian American heritage to serve in the nation’s second highest office – who gaveled in the final 53-47 affirmative Senate vote nominating Brown Jackson to the court.
"We are excited to release this bobblehead of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson,” National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum co-founder and CEO Phil Sklar wrote in a statement. “When the Senate voted to confirm Judge Jackson, history was made. We celebrate the momentous day in the 233-year history of the Supreme Court.”
The museum also released a wider Supreme Court set representing 16 justices, both past and present, alongside Brown Jackson’s bobblehead, hoping to “provide the public with the chance to collect bobbleheads representing the Supreme Court justices that have a very influential impact on our lives given their roles in our government and the impact their decisions have,” Sklar added.
The release included bobbleheads in the likeness of seven sitting members of the Supreme Court: Chief Justice John Roberts and associate justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas. The museum previously released bobbleheads of sitting associate justice Amy Coney Barrett, as well as the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Also included are several big-name justices of years past, like the late Antonin Scalia, Thurgood Marshall and Earl Warren; Stephen Breyer, whose retirement cleared the way for Brown Jackson’s rise to the court, was another bobblehead included in the release.
Warren, who served as the court’s 14th chief justice, was on the court from 1953 - 1969, during which time he wrote the majority opinion in a number of landmark, precedent-setting cases, including Miranda v. Arizona, which confirmed the so-called “Miranda Rights” for those questioned by police, and Loving v. Virginia, which declared laws banning interracial marriage unconstitional.
Marshall, a longtime civil rights activist who died in 1993, was the first Black man to serve on the Supreme Court, beginning his tenure in 1967. He was also the lawyer who successfully argued the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case in front of the same court, the decision which ruled that the “separate but equal” precedent could not be upheld in public schools – a case for which Warren wrote the majority opinion.
And Scalia, who only passed away in 2016, was long known as a stalwart conservative on the Supreme Court. He notably argued in his dissent to the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey that the constitution did not guarantee a person’s right to abortion. He is often regarded as one of the most influential originalists to serve on the Supreme Court.
While the first batch of Brown Jackson bobbleheads are already sold out, the next set are available for pre-order on the museum’s website, to be delivered in November. The 16 additional Supreme Court justices are available for pre-order with arrival scheduled for December.