Published on March 21, 2022

Updated on Oct. 7, 2024

Niya Young, a Mizzou Law 3L, is spending the week in Washington to support the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as the next U.S. Supreme Court justice. Young is joining more than 100 law students from 17 law schools around the country to raise their voices in support of Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman to sit on the USSC.

“As a soon to be public defender, it was important for me to travel to DC to support and celebrate the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court,” Young said. “Representation matters and as the first Black woman and first public defender to be nominated to the nation’s highest court, I found it vital to come to DC, as opposed to watching the hearing alone on my phone or laptop in my apartment in Columbia. For over 200 years now, law school students have believed that if they desired to one day become a judge, they had to become a prosecutor first. That narrative crafted careers for millions and now the narrative is changing.”