Ketanji Brown Jackson smiled at the White House screen, her emotion showing as Vice President Kamala Harris announced her appeal to the Supreme Court.

Harris led the confirmation in the Senate, next to Jackson was President Joe Biden in front of the television.

While both laughed and held hands and hugged, many Democrats in the chamber cheered.

In the 233-year history of the United States Supreme Court, Jackson is the first black woman to administer justice.

In the vote, 53 senators voted in favor of her appointment and 47 against her.

The unified group of Democrats was joined by Republicans Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah.

The new Chief Justice will take office in early October,

The 51-year-old Jackson has had a classic legal career.

She was appointed by Biden to the Washington, DC Federal Circuit Court of Appeals last year.

Before that, the mother of two daughters had already been a judge at the federal district court in the capital.

Since the year 2000 she had worked as a lawyer, at times also as a public defender.

After graduating from Harvard University, she worked as an assistant for constitutional judge Breyer for a year, and she will now take his place.

Jackson, who was born in the capital and grew up in Miami, also served as vice chair of the federal sentencing commission from 2010 to 2014.

As early as 2016, she was under discussion as the successor to the late Chief Justice Antonin Scalia.

No change in the balance of power

The judge's qualifications are undisputed among experts - but she was exposed to harsh attacks from many Republicans in the hearings before the vote.

The fact that Joe Biden had promised during the election campaign to nominate a black woman for the Supreme Court annoyed many conservatives.

They said judges should be chosen based on ability, not color or gender.

They accused Jackson of making “soft” judgments or as a lawyer defending detainees from the Guantánamo military prison.

Tom Cotton, Senator from Arkansas, went so far as to ask, "Do you think we should be more or less catching and locking up killers?"

Jackson made particularly lenient judgments against pedo-criminal offenders.

So the obsession with alleged child rapists among Democrats spilled over into the appeals process.

Jackson, however, got through the interrogations without getting involved in the provocations.

It was disrespectful to some observers that Republican Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma did not wear ties on Thursday, contrary to the House's mandatory dress code.

They had to cast their vote from the cloakroom.

Outside the chamber, representatives of right-wing organizations were able to become even clearer than the politicians in the surveys and showed how much racism is behind the violent reactions to the personnel.

As Charlie Kirk, founder of the influential youth organization Turning Point USA, said: “Ketanji Brown Jackson is what your country looks like under the Critical Race Theory.

KBJ is your country on CRT.” The “dumb” judge is “an embodiment of the tyranny” under which we live today, Kirk said.

He stands for the right wing around Donald Trump, which still dominates the Republicans.

They have been fighting anti-racist teaching content in schools and universities for months under the slogan "Critical Race Theory", which actually describes a legal theory

Despite all the attacks, no one could take his great joy about the first African American woman on the Supreme Court bench, New Jersey's black Senator Cory Booker said when Jackson was questioned.

That was also the mood of many Democrats after the successful vote.

The fact that Kamala Harris, the first black vice president, could announce the appointment of the first black woman to the Supreme Court is a historic milestone, said Congresswoman Terri Sewell, surrounded by other members of the "Congressional Black Caucus".

Sewell is the first African American representative from Alabama.

Jackson is redefining what is possible for black women of future generations and what African American girls can dream of for themselves.

"You have to see it, to be it",

Jackson's appointment is a historic step given the political importance of the Supreme Court and further normalizes the exercise of political power by black women.

However, the appointment does not change the political balance of power – the Conservatives will still have a comfortable majority of six to three judges.