Ketanji Brown Jackson set to make US history as supreme court’s first black woman

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will make history Monday as she goes before a Senate panel considering her nomination to be the first black woman on the US Supreme Court.

Barring a major mishap, the Democrats’ narrow control of the Senate means confirmation is all but assured. Although she will not shift the ideological balance on the conservative-controlled court, the 51-year-old Jackson would add a fresh voice to its outnumbered liberal wing and potentially serve for decades.

In the first of four days of hearings, Jackson will listen as senators give opening statements geared as much toward this year’s elections as to her confirmation. Democrats are likely to extol her qualifications and criticise the court, while Republicans will seek to use her criminal-defence background as a way to question President Joe Biden’s commitment to law and order.

“President Biden is deliberately working to make the whole federal judiciary softer on crime,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said last week. Republicans have also signalled they will try to connect Jackson to liberal outside groups that have endorsed her.

She would join Justice Sonia Sotomayor as the only two current justices with experience as a US district judge, a position Jackson held for eight years before Biden elevated her to a powerful federal appeals court in Washington.

Jackson “will bring extraordinary qualifications, deep experience and intellect, and a rigorous judicial record to the court,” Biden said when he announced her Supreme Court nomination last month.