The 51-year-old is likely to be grilled on claims she’s soft on crime.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is on track to become the U.S. Supreme Court’s first-ever Black female justice as President Biden’s pick to fill Justice Stephen Breyer’s seat when he retires this summer. The 51-year-old’s confirmation hearings begin today. Here’s what we can expect.
This week’s schedule
Jackson will be formally introduced on Monday, March 21. She’ll give a televised opening statement, followed by questions from lawmakers on Tuesday and Wednesday. After that, there’ll be a day of testimony from additional witnesses, followed by about a week of consideration, and a committee vote. If her nomination is approved, it’ll be sent to the full Senate for consideration.
Monday’s hearing kicks off at 11 a.m. ET, with opening statements from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Judge Thomas Griffith, formerly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and Lisa Fairfax, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, will introduce Judge Jackson, who will then give her opening statement. Tuesday’s questions are set to start at 9 a.m. ET.
The GOP challenges Jackson can expect
According to CNN, the Republicans’ strategy during Jackson’s hearing is believed to be two-pronged. They’re expected to raise tough queries about Jackson specifically — including her experience as a judge and public defender, her federal commission stint that saw drug sentences slashed, and her briefs in support of Guantanamo Bay detainees. Then, they may switch focus to the Biden administration more broadly.
Jackson’s already had a preview of the kinds of challenges she’ll likely face. Last week, Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley posted a Twitter thread, claiming he’s seen an “alarming pattern when it comes to Judge Jackson’s treatment of sex offenders, especially those preying on children.”
Hawley’s inaccurate thread focused on several cases in which he claimed that Jackson let offenders off with particularly light sentences.
A White House spokesman said that the tweets constituted “toxic and weakly-presented misinformation that relies on taking cherry-picked elements of her record out of context — and it buckles under the lightest scrutiny.” Appearing on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin said that Hawley was “wrong” and “unfair in his analysis.”
“Judge Jackson has been scrutinized more than any person I can think of. This is her fourth time before the Senate Judiciary Committee. In three previous times, she came through with flying colors and bipartisan support, the last time as soon as just last year,” said the Illinois Democrat.
A CNN review of the cases Hawley referred to found that the senator had inflated his portrayal of Jackson — who for the most part, had abided by normal judicial sentencing practices. He also misleadingly framed some of her follow-up questions as opinions.
Jackson’s professional background
Jackson has already been elevated by President Biden once, when he appointed her in 2021 to the appeals court in DC. She’s been focused on her goals from an early age. According to Bloomberg, she wrote in her high school yearbook aged 17: “I want to go into law and eventually have a judicial appointment.”
Jackson’s resume boasts two spells at Harvard, public service, distinguished clerkships, judicial opinions, plus experience in Big Law — the term used by the legal industry to describe the most prominent law firms.
She switched course in 2010, becoming a commissioner on the U.S. Sentencing Commission. As CNN notes, was generally acknowledged at the time that federal drug sentences were too long, and body unanimously decided to shorten them — effective retroactively, which meant that over 30,000 federal prisoners got reduced sentences.
In 2013, Jackson joined the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, after being nominated by President Obama. She was introduced at her confirmation hearing by Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan. “I know she is clearly qualified,” Ryan said. “But it bears repeating just how qualified she is.”
“Our politics may differ, but my praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, for her integrity, is unequivocal,” he added. Jackson is related to Ryan by marriage — her husband’s twin brother is married to the sister of Ryan’s wife.
Asked at her 2021 confirmation hearing for the seat on the federal appeals court why she had chosen to go into public service earlier in her career, Jackson replied: “I remember thinking very clearly that I felt like I didn’t have enough of an idea of what really happened in criminal cases, I wanted to understand the system.”
“I thought it would be an opportunity to help people as well,” she continued. “I come from a background of public service. My parents were in public service my brother was a police officer and in the military and being in the public defenders office felt very much like the opportunity to help with my skills and talents.”
