Making history, Joe Biden’s Supreme Court pick Ketanji Brown Jackson vows to defend US democracy
- Senate Judiciary Committee opens confirmation hearing for first black woman picked for the US Supreme Court
- President Joe Biden nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to succeed retiring liberal Justice Stephen Breyer
US Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson vowed to defend the “grand experiment of American democracy” as she launched a historic bid to be the first black woman on the nation’s highest judicial bench.
President Joe Biden’s pick made the pledge as she was formally introduced at the start of televised hearings that will go on to include two days of questioning and a final day of testimony from outside witnesses.
“If I am confirmed, I commit to you that I will work productively to support and defend the Constitution and the grand experiment of American democracy that has endured over these past 246 years,” the 51-year-old former public defender told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
A federal judge with almost a decade of experience on lower courts, Jackson previously served as a law clerk to Stephen Breyer, the retiring liberal justice she is being nominated to replace.
She is the first black woman tapped for a seat on the court and would also be the only nominee of a Democratic president to be confirmed since Elena Kagan in 2010.
She assured senators at the start of what can be a highly politically partisan process in the United States that she took her duty to be independent “very seriously” and always applied the law “without fear or favour”.