High Court hearings are no place for political theater

When Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, confirmed by the Senate Thursday to the Supreme Court, joins fellow Justice Amy Coney Barrett for that first full-bench photo, the two have much to talk about.

To wit: what it’s like to run the confirmation gauntlet while dodging arrows from the other side of the political aisle. When Justice Barrett went through the process in 2020, she took fire as Donald Trump’s pick for the post.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., asked her about Trump’s remarks on appointing judges that advance his agenda. Barrett told the committee: “I am 100% committed to judicial independence from political pressure.”

Barrett was grilled on the Affordable Care Act, the future of abortion rights and same-sex marriage, and told senators she had no “agenda.”

Not good enough. Kamala Harris, then a California senator, tweeted: “During her confirmation hearing, Justice Ginsburg said the right to choose was “essential to women’s equality.” We already know where Judge Barrett stands on a woman’s right to choose. Her writings made it clear. It would be a disgrace to appoint her to Justice Ginsburg’s seat.”

This month it was Judge Jackson’s turn to serve as proxy for the president in her confirmation hearings, and Republican senators didn’t hold back the disdain nor the disrespect.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Thursday “Based on her record, I think we can anticipate that she will vote consistently to undermine the constitutional rights of Americans, to undermine our rights to free speech, to undermine our rights to religious liberty, to undermine our rights under the Second Amendment to keep and bear arms,” Newsweek reported.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked how often she attends church. “On a scale of 1 to 10, how faithful would you say you are in terms of religion?”

It was the same bid to weaponize one’s faith that Justice Barrett, a Catholic, faced in 2020.

Judge Jackson’s credentials are impeccable: She spent nine years on the bench as a federal appeals court judge. The Harvard grad also worked as a public defender and was a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission. She clerked with Justice Stephen Breyer, the man whose position she will fill.

But as we’ve seen over the years, credentials take a back seat to political theater.

As the Associated Press reported, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah all said the same thing — they might not always agree with Jackson, but they found her to be enormously well qualified for the job. Collins and Murkowski both decried increasingly partisan confirmation fights, which only worsened during the battles over Trump’s three picks. Collins said the process was “broken” and Murkowski called it “corrosive” and “more detached from reality by the year.”

It’s too much to hope that fellow lawmakers will take those sentiments to heart and put an end to the partisan grandstanding that marks these confirmation hearings. But Washington is more divided than ever, and the chance to pile on the opposing party’s nominee is too tempting to resist.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson made history as the first Black woman confirmed to the Supreme Court. She, like other jurists who withstood the confirmation hearing brickbats, can go on to serve as guardian and interpreter of the Constitution.

Their realm is the judicial, not the political.

If only the Senate could get on board.