Jackson set for Senate hearing for high court
Nominee to present testimony Monday
– Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court, is going before the Senate Judiciary Committee with the path to her historic confirmation seemingly clear.
Committee hearings begin Monday for the 51-year-old Jackson, a federal judge for the past nine years. She is expected to present an opening statement late in the day, then answer questions from the committee’s 11 Democrats and 11 Republicans over the next two days.
She appeared before the same committee last year, after President Joe Biden chose her to fill an opening on the federal appeals court in Washington.
Her testimony will give most Americans, as well as the Senate, their most extensive look yet at the Harvardtrained lawyer with a resume that includes two years as a federal public defender. That makes her the first nominee with significant criminal defense experience since Thurgood Marshall, the first Black American to serve on the nation’s highest court.
The American Bar Association, which evaluates judicial nominees, on Friday gave Jackson’s its highest rating, unanimously “well qualified.”
Janette Mccarthy Wallace, general counsel of the NAACP, said she is excited to see a Black woman on the verge of a high court seat.
“Representation matters,” Wallace said. “It’s critical to have diverse experience on the bench. It should reflect the
rich cultural diversity of this country.”
It’s not yet clear how aggressively Republicans will go after Jackson, given that her confirmation would not alter the court’s 6-3 conservative majority.
Still, some Republicans have signaled they could use Jackson’s nomination to try to brand Democrats as soft on crime, an emerging theme in GOP midterm election campaigns. Biden has chosen several former public defenders for life-tenured judicial posts. In addition, Jackson served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency created by Congress to reduce disparity in federal prison sentences.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO., highlighted one potential line of attack. “I’ve noticed an alarming pattern when it comes to Judge Jackson’s treatment of sex offenders, especially those preying on children,” Hawley wrote on Twitter last week in a thread that was echoed by the Republican National Committee. HAWWASHINGTON
ley did not raise the issue when he questioned Jackson last year before voting against her appeals court confirmation.
The White House pushed back against the criticism as “toxic and weakly presented misinformation.” Sentencing expert Douglas Berman, an Ohio State law professor, wrote on his blog that Jackson’s record shows she is skeptical of the range of prison terms recommended for child pornography cases, “but so too were prosecutors in the majority of her cases and so too are district judges nationwide.”
Hawley is one of several committee Republicans, along with Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who are potential 2024 presidential candidates, and their aspirations may collide with other Republicans who would just as soon not pursue a scorched-earth approach to Jackson’s nomination.