CLOSED CHAMBERS

What can memoirs by Supreme Court Justices teach us?

- AMY DAVIDSON SORKIN

"Fools" is one of Neil Simon's lesser plays. It involves a schoolmaster who, in some imaginary past, is sent to a Ukrainian village whose residents are burdened with a curse of stupidity. The comedy is broad. But in the nineteeneighties a member of the Miami Palmetto Senior High School speech-anddebate team performed an extract, complete with an Eastern European accent, to great effect. The South Florida high-school forensics circuit took note, and other students began using the same scene, but without the same comic skill or success. "It seems to me that you are not doing Neil Simon's 'Fools," a judge told one disappointed competitor. "You are doing Ketanji Brown doing Neil Simon's 'Fools."" Learning how to be, or become, Ketanji Brown Jackson was no mean feat, even at a forensics tournament. In her new memoir, "Lovely One" (Random House), Jackson, who joined the Supreme Court in 2022, writes that she was "fiercely" competitive. She skipped her high-school commencement to compete in the National Catholic Forensic League championships. "You will have other graduations," her father said the plural noun being a reflection of the family's expectations. She won for Original Oratory, with a speech about valuing one's time.