Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson visits UAF on July 14 to take questions

It's not often a sitting Supreme Court justice comes to Alaska. On July 14, Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will appear at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, taking questions from Alaskans about the work of the nation's highest court. The 7 p.m. event at Davis Concert Hall will be hosted by veteran Fairbanks newsman Robert Hannon, and Jackson will answer questions attendees submit in advance.

Jackson brings an unusual résumé to the bench. When she joined the Court in 2022, she became the first Black woman to serve on it in more than two centuries — and the first justice to have worked as a federal public defender, representing people who couldn't afford a lawyer, a background none of her colleagues share. Before her appointment she spent years as a federal trial judge, and earlier still clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer, the very justice she would go on to replace. On the Court, she has quickly become one of its most active and pointed questioners from the bench.

For Alaskans, the Court is no abstraction. Its rulings reach directly into questions that define life here — tribal sovereignty, subsistence rights, and how the state's lands and resources can be used. A chance to question one of the nine people who decide them doesn't come around often. Tickets and the advance-question process are handled through UAF's summer sessions.