Jackson dodges GOP's darts, confirmation likely
WASHINGTON >> Federal judge Ketanji Brown Jackson faced down a barrage of Republican questioning Wednesday about her sentencing of criminal defendants, as her history-making bid to join the Supreme Court veered from lofty constitutional questions to attacks on her motivations on the bench.
In her final day of Senate questioning, she declared she would rule “without any agendas” as the high court's first Black female justice and rejected Republican efforts to paint her as soft on crime in her decade on the federal bench. Today, the final of four days of hearings, legal experts on both sides will weigh in.
Though her approval seems all but sure — Democrats are aiming for a vote before Easter — Republicans kept trying to chip away at her record on Wednesday.
But the GOP criticism was punctuated with effusive praise from Democrats, and by reflections on the historic nature of her nomination — none more riveting in the room than from New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who used his time not to ask questions but to tearfully speak and draw
tears from Jackson as well.
Booker, who is Black, said that he sees “my ancestors and yours” when he looks at her. “I know what it's taken for you to sit here in this seat,” he said. “You have earned this spot.”
Jackson was silent as Booker talked, but tears rolled down her face, her family sitting behind her.
The judge was in tears a second time after similar praise from Sen. Alex Padilla, and responded to the California Democrat that she hopes to be an inspiration because “I love this country, because I love the law.”
During more than 22 hours of hearings over two
days, GOP senators aggressively questioned her on the sentences she has handed down to child pornography offenders in her nine years as a federal judge, her legal advocacy on behalf of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, her thoughts on critical race theory and even her religious views.
In response to questioning about a case over affirmative action at Harvard University, her alma mater where she now serves on the Board of Overseers, Jackson said she would recuse herself. “That's my plan,” she responded when Texas Sen. Ted Cruz asked her about it.
In the fall, the court will take up challenges to the consideration of race in college admissions, in lawsuits filed by Asian American applicants to Harvard, a private institution, and the University of North Carolina, a state school.
Republicans spent much of Wednesday focused on her sentencing, particularly on the child pornography cases, as they had on Tuesday. Tempers rose as the day wore on, with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin slamming down his gavel at one point when Cruz refused to yield after his time expired while he was grilling Jackson.
“You can bang it as long as you want,” Cruz snapped, shouting that he just wanted Jackson to answer his question.
“At some point you have to follow the rules,” Durbin shot back.
In another round of tense questioning, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham interrogated Jackson on the punishment she believes appropriate for people convicted of child pornography. Like Cruz and others on the committee, Graham said she had been too lenient on those criminals. Graham frequently interrupted her as she answered; at one point he said judges should simply “put their a— in jail!”