Monday kicked off Senate confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s pick to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court following his retirement this coming summer. If confirmed, Jackson would be the first Black woman and only current justice with a defense background on the court.
Here’s what to expect as the confirmation process begins.
The hearings might get ugly
First Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Bruce Selya, who Jackson clerked with at the start of her career, told GBH News he believes the proceedings could get tense given the current political divides.
“I think there's a highly partisan atmosphere that prevails currently in the Senate, particularly with respect to Supreme Court picks,” he said. “I think Judge Jackson better fasten her seatbelt.”
Judge Nancy Gertner, retired U.S. District Judge for the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, says she has already seen political strife play out during the proceedings so far.
“What you’re seeing is that the Republicans are taking Republican electoral talking points and basically shoveling them towards her,” Gertner said on Boston Public Radio Monday. “It’s really a preview of the things they hope to bring about in the fall. So it’ll be acrimonious to that degree.”
Attacks on Jackson’s defender background show a double standard
Some Republicans have raised critiques about Jackson’s work as a public defender, questioning her suitability to serve of the Supreme Court because she defended people accused of consuming child pornography and Guantanamo Bay detainees. But Gertner argues that line of questioning represents a double standard.
“Overwhelming majority of judges on the Supreme Court, including now, have represented major corporations,” Gertner said. “So they don’t mind defense work, as long as it's defense of major corporations as opposed to defense of ordinary human beings.”
Gerner thinks some of the attacks on Jackson, such by Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley on child pornography cases, are in bad faith, since the Constitution gives everyone, no matter their crime, the right to a lawyer.
“It’s sort of geared to, basically, the Twitter feed, not necessarily to a meaningful conversation,” she said.
The former judge thinks these attacks could be a false flag. “These are completely disingenuous attacks ... because they [Republicans] can’t deal with the diversity issue,” she said. “They don’t want to say, ‘There’s something wrong with having a Black woman.’”
Vice President Kamala Harris could cast the tie-breaking vote
If the Senate Judiciary Committee votes yes on Jackson, her nomination will head to the entire Senate for a vote. With a split Senate, Harris might play a key role.
“This is a moment when it could well come down to the tie breaking vote of the Vice President of the United States,” said Martha Minow, professor and former dean at Harvard Law School, Jackson’s alma mater. “It would be quite notable to have the first African American Vice President providing a key vote for the appointment of an African American woman to the Supreme Court.”
It is possible that some Republicans cast their votes in favor of Jackson, but avoiding a 50-50 split is not a given. When Jackson came before the Senate for confirmation of her nomination to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham and Lisa Murkowski voted yes.
“It’s notable that one of those senators, Senator Murkowski from Alaska, has said, ‘Well, Supreme Court's different,’ ... maybe she’s signaling she will not be supporting this confirmation,” Minow said. “That just shows you that the stakes are much higher for the Supreme Court appointments.”
The hearings will run through Thursday, and will be broadcast live on GBH at 89.7 and WGBH.org.
