After Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement in January, President Joe Biden pledged to fulfill his campaign promise to fill the vacancy with a Black woman. A month later, Biden nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to become the 116th associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.
If confirmed, 51-year-old Jackson would be the first Black woman ever to serve on the high court. She would also be one of the few women justices and one of the youngest, second only to Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Jackson faced a difficult confirmation process, in which the GOP sought to appeal to their conservative base during rounds of questioning. Still, experts told Callie Crossley on Basic Black that Jackson will likely lock in the necessary votes to be confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Tracey Maclin, a professor at Boston University School of Law who once had Jackson as a student, described her as "extremely smart." Maclin said the confirmation hearing was "all about the politics of the moment [and] has nothing to do with her qualifications."
During the hearings, Republican lawmakers said Jackson was soft on crime. They peppered her with hours of questions about her sentencing practices on child pornography cases and cultural issues such as critical race theory and the rights of transgender people. Altogether, Jackson went through about 24 hours of questioning over the span of just two days.
Renée Graham, associate editor and opinion columnist with The Boston Globe, said members wanted to "provoke an angry Black woman moment," but did not succeed.
"Republicans can't stop this, but what they did attempt to do, of course, was to make the process as horrible and arduous for her as possible. ... They weren't trying to illuminate anything about Jackson," Graham said.
Jackson stayed calm and professional, said Renée Landers, a professor and faculty head at Suffolk University School of Law.
"People of color do not have the option, or at least women of color do not have the option of reacting emotionally or angrily when challenged in that way," Landers said.
Dr. Cecil R. Webster Jr., a Harvard-trained psychiatrist at McLean Hospital, said he watched Jackson's hearings with his family. He said it was painful to see her mischaracterized by some of the Republicans in Congress.
"Their actions really suggest that there's a lot of fear, like fear of what she might represent," Webster said.
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