President Biden nominated federal appeals court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to fill the Supreme Court seat of retiring justice Stephen Breyer. The 51-year-old Jackson will enter the maelstrom of scrutiny that surrounds top court nominees in our hypercharged political environment. But if you’re turning to Leafly for news about a Supreme Court nominee, you want to know one thing: Where does she stand on marijuana legalization?

Here’s what we know.

A brief survey of Jackson’s appearances in the media turns up no direct statement regarding legalization. But there are plenty of entries on her resume to indicate that she’d give any legal challenges to prohibition at least a fair hearing.

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post, in a piece just published this morning, gives heavy weight to Jackson’s two years of experience as a public defender in Washington, DC. “She would be the first justice to have served as a federal public defender,” Marcus wrote, “two years in the appellate office of the D.C. public defender service. Not since Thurgood Marshall has a justice had such extensive experience representing criminal defendants.”

During her confirmation hearing for a seat on the federal appeals court, Jackson told a Senate confirmation committee that “there is a direct line from my defender service to what I do on the bench.”

Any lawyer who has spent a single day as a public defender has had firsthand experience with the inequities and cruelties of America’s marijuana laws.

Jackson’s interaction with the nation’s drug laws didn’t stop there, though. Later in her career she served on the US Sentencing Commission, which was charged with reforming the outrageous racial disparities in our nation’s drug laws.

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