Democrats oppose Republican attacks on US Supreme Court nominee

Senate Democrats are defending Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s nominee to become the first Black woman on the US Supreme Court, from Republican attacks painting her as a liberal activist in confirmation hearings that entered the third day on Wednesday.

Jackson faced the Senate judiciary committee after a marathon session on Tuesday when Republicans put hostile questions. Jackson rejected Republican accusations of improper lenience as a judge in sentencing child pornography offenders and criticism of her legal representation earlier in her career of detainees at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Republican senators have tried to link Jackson to leftist activist groups and “critical race theory”, which argues US history and institutions are infused with racial bias.

Jackson served since 2021 as a federal appellate judge after eight years as a federal district court judge. She pledged to be an independent jurist who would not inject her own views into rulings.

Democratic Senator Chris Coons said on Tuesday that Jackson ruled in a 2016 case in favour of the Republican national committee that now calls her a “radical left-wing activist”. Jackson ruled that a federal agency had to release e-mails relating to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. The ruling came shortly before the Democratic convention that voted Clinton as her party’s presidential nominee to run against Republican Donald Trump.

“In this case you reinforced your deserved reputation for following the law, not a partisan agenda,” said Coons.

In another case Coons cited, Jackson in 2019 dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group challenging construction of a section of Trump’s proposed wall along the US-Mexico border.

Her confirmation would not change the court’s ideological balance — it has a 6-3 conservative majority — but would let Biden freshen its liberal bloc with a judge young enough at age 51 to serve for decades.

The Democratic president nominated Jackson in February to the lifetime post to succeed retiring liberal Justice Stephen Breyer. With a simple majority needed for confirmation and the Senate divided 50-50 between the parties, she would get the job if Democrats remain united regardless of how the Republicans vote.

All 22 members of the committee were to question Jackson again on Wednesday, with outside experts testifying on Thursday’s final day.

In responding to Republican claims that she was soft on child pornography defendants, Jackson said: “As a mother and a judge who has had to deal with these cases, I was thinking that nothing could be further from the truth.” In each such case, she said, “I did my duty to hold the defendants accountable”.

Sentencing experts in a March 20 letter to the committee deemed Jackson’s sentencing in such cases “squarely within the mainstream of federal district court judges nationally”.

Jackson said her representation of Guantanamo detainees was consistent with American values of fairness.

If confirmed, Jackson will be the 116th judge to serve on the high court, the sixth woman and the third Black person. With Jackson on the bench, the court will for the first time have four women and two Black judges.

Reuters