March 28 (UPI) — The Senate panel that questioned Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson last week and heard from legal experts about her qualifications will meet again on Monday in the next step toward what would be a historic confirmation.
President Joe Biden nominated Jackson to succeed retiring Associate Justice Stephen Breyer when he steps down from the high court bench this summer. She is the first Black woman nominated for a seat on the Supreme Court and, if confirmed, she would be the first Black woman to be a high court justice.
Last week, Jackson faced down tough questioning from Republican members of the panel over a number of issues, including her track record, her religious beliefs, her political leanings and GOP concerns about certain parts of her history as a judge.
Monday, the judiciary committee will meet to review Jackson’s nomination. The next step will be a vote by the committee on her nomination, followed by a vote in the full Senate — where she needs only a simple majority, 51 votes, to ascend to the Supreme Court.
Although Jackson is expected to win confirmation as Biden’s first Supreme Court appointee, the judiciary committee doesn’t plan to vote on her candidacy for another week, on April 4.
No Republican senator has said yet that they will vote for Jackson’s confirmation and the full chamber vote is expected to be split along party lines. A few days ago, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who’s often been a swing voter on contentious issues, said that he’s going to vote for her.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, another Democratic senator who’s broken ranks and voted with Republicans, has not yet indicated which way she will vote.
Among the concerns about Jackson cited by some GOP senators include purported leniency in sentencing child pornography offenders, briefs she wrote as a public defender, her judicial philosophy and liberal groups that support her nomination.
Republicans also used last week’s hearing as a platform to complain about the Democrats’ treatment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings in 2018 — which included testimony from a woman who said Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in college.
Representatives of the American Bar Association testified on the final day of confirmation hearings last week, and effectively debunked GOP claims that Jackson is soft on crime or that she’s politically biased. They said they could find no evidence to suggest either.
Jackson, 51, has been a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since last summer. The court is considered to be the second-highest court in the nation. If confirmed, Jackson will succeed Breyer when the current Supreme Court term ends in June.
