WASHINGTON – Less than a month after President Joe Biden introduced her as his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson faces the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday for the first in what will be a whirlwind week of hearings.
If confirmed, Jackson would be the 116th justice and the first Black woman seated on the nation’s highest court in its 233-year-history. While Jackson’s confirmation of her would n’t change the ideological makeup of the court, her background of her as a former federal public defender and a member of the US Sentencing Commission may have a big influence.
But first, Jackson, a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, has to navigate the kind of politics jurists generally like to avoid. Monday’s hearing will be all talk and no questions, with senators – and Jackson herself – offering carefully scripted opening statements that may offer some clues about how the next few days will go.
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Who is Ketanji Brown Jackson?
Biden’s decision to nominate Jackson for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court wasn’t much of a surprise. In many ways, she was the safest bet.
That’s because Jackson, who Biden nominated to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit last year, has already been confirmed three times before. The Miami native and Harvard-educated lawyer had formerly served as a US District Court judge and on the US Sentencing Commission. Both of those jobs required Senate approval.
Jackson, 51, clerked for the man she would replace, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer. And President Barack Obama not only nominated her to the federal bench in 2012 but he considered nominating her to the Supreme Court back in 2016.
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Jackson has served on the DC Circuit since June and so has written only three opinions there. Of her two majority opinions, one dealt with whether a defense contractor could sue Iraq. In the other, Jackson wrote for a unanimous court that sided with federal unions in a dispute over labor negotiations.
But she has a deep record from the federal trial court, writing hundreds of opinions. In her most often-cited decision by her, Jackson ruled in 2019 that President Donald Trump’s former White House counsel, Don McGahn, had to testify as part of a congressional impeachment inquiry. But she’s also crafted opinions that sided with the Trump administrationincluding on immigration and his border wall.
– John Fritze, Kevin McCoy, Nick Penzenstadler
A look at Ketanji Brown Jackson’s family
Growing up in a largely Jewish community in South Miami, Florida, Jackson, who is Protestant, was a nationally ranked orator on her high school speech and debate team. At Harvard, actor Matt Damon was one of her scene partners in a drama course. But it was another relationship she developed at Harvard that would shape her life for her.
She and her husband, Dr. Patrick Jackson, met as Harvard undergraduates. They married later, as she went to Harvard Law School and he went to Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. Patrick Jackson is now a surgeon on staff at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC
Jackson and her husband have two daughters, Talia, a college student, and Leila, a high schooler. After Associate Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016, Leila Jackson, then in middle school, wrote a letter asking Obama to consider her mother de ella as Scalia’s successor.
“She’s determined, honest and never breaks a promise,” Leila wrote, “even if there were other things she’d rather do.”
– John Fritze, Kevin McCoy, Nick Penzenstadler
Agenda for Jackson’s hearing
The Senate Judiciary Committee, evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, will hold four days of hearings to consider Jackson for the Supreme Courtwhich is consistent with past nominees in modern times.
Starting at 11 am ET Monday, the first day’s hearing will be like an appetizer, with committee members delivering 10-minute opening statements. Jackson will also get 10 minutes to give an opening pitch to the senators. The statements will likely offer some clues about the lines of questioning Democrats and Republicans will pursue.
The main event begins on Tuesday, when members of the committee will each get 30 minutes, in order of seniority, to question Jackson. The questioning will continue Wednesday with another round, with each senator receiving 20 minutes.
The final day of hearings, Thursday, will be an opportunity for outside groups and experts, such as the American Bar Association, to offer their thoughts on Jackson.
– John Fritz
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism