Jus­tice Ke­tan­ji Brown Jack­son is mak­ing her first ap­pear­ance on the Supreme Court bench in a brief court­room cer­e­mo­ny three days ahead of the start of the high court’s new term.

Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, Vice Pres­i­dent Ka­mala Har­ris and their spous­es are ex­pect­ed Fri­day at the in­vi­ta­tion-on­ly cer­e­mo­ni­al in­vesti­ture for Jack­son, the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.

Dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, the 52-year-old Jack­son will fol­low the cus­tom of every oth­er new jus­tice since 1972 and sit in a chair that once be­longed to John Mar­shall, who served as chief jus­tice for 34 years in the ear­ly 1800s.

Mar­shall al­so was a slave­hold­er, per­haps adding a spe­cial poignan­cy to Jack­son tak­ing her place in his one-time pos­ses­sion. She is on­ly the third Black jus­tice in the court’s his­to­ry, along with her new col­league Jus­tice Clarence Thomas and the late Jus­tice Thur­good Mar­shall.

Fri­day’s cer­e­mo­ny in­cludes the read­ing of the procla­ma­tion ap­point­ing Jack­son to the court. She will al­so re­peat the oath she took when she for­mal­ly joined the court in June, just af­ter the re­tire­ment of Jus­tice Stephen Brey­er.

Jack­son was con­firmed in April on a 53-47 vote in the Sen­ate, with three Re­pub­li­can sen­a­tors join­ing all De­moc­rats to sup­port her.

Biden had pledged dur­ing his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign that he would nom­i­nate a Black woman to the Supreme Court.

Jack­son is the first jus­tice ap­point­ed by a De­mo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent since Jus­tice Ele­na Ka­gan joined the court in 2010. Ka­gan was ap­point­ed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, who al­so ap­point­ed Jus­tice So­nia So­tomay­or in 2009.

It ap­peared Oba­ma would get a third high court pick when Jus­tice An­tonin Scalia died in Feb­ru­ary 2016. But Sen­ate Re­pub­li­cans re­fused to take up Oba­ma’s nom­i­na­tion of Mer­rick Gar­land, then serv­ing as a fed­er­al ap­peals court judge. Gar­land, now At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, will al­so par­tic­i­pate in Fri­day’s cer­e­mo­ny.

For­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump even­tu­al­ly chose Jus­tice Neil Gor­such, the first of his three Supreme Court ap­pointees, to fill Scalia’s seat.  

—Sto­ry by MARK SHER­MAN | AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS