Ketanji Brown Jackson set to make US history as supreme court’s first black woman
- The 51-year-old would bring a fresh, liberal voice to the conservative-controlled court and potentially serve for decades
- Jackson has ‘extraordinary qualifications, deep experience and intellect, rigorous judicial record’ said Biden, announcing her nomination last month
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.
Jackson would succeed the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, a liberal who worked to forge consensus on the court when possible. Jackson served as a law clerk to Breyer soon after she graduated from Harvard Law School. She would succeed him after the court’s current term ends in late June or early July.
Her nomination so far has not produced the kind of political fireworks that surrounded President Donald Trump’s picks – Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
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Led by Chairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, the Senate Judiciary Committee is split 11-11 between the two political parties and it could deadlock over whether to advance her nomination before the full Senate.
Ranking Republican Chuck Grassley and almost all other panel Republicans are hinting strongly at a “no” vote, and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is indicating he might join them, despite backing every Supreme Court nominee since he came to office in 2003.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has the ability to call a vote to get the nomination before the full Senate, and Vice-President Kamala Harris could cast a tiebreaking vote if needed. Senate Democrats have unified behind every one of Biden’s lower court picks, and Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine had positive things to say about Jackson after they met privately this month, suggesting she could get at least some bipartisan backing.
Schumer has said he is confident Jackson will be confirmed by April 9, when senators begin a two-week spring recess.
