On the first day of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, Republican senators began previewing attack lines accusing her of being soft on crime.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday emphasized “my duty to be independent” if confirmed as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, as Republican senators almost immediately began previewing attack lines accusing her of being lenient on crime. On the first day of her confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Jackson sat mostly in silence listening to 22 senators talk at length about what they wanted in a nominee. Race was not always an unspoken subtext, as Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, suggested that tough questioning would be criticized as racism. “‘We’re all racist if we ask hard questions’ is not going to fly with us,” Mr. Graham said. More than four hours after the hearing began, Judge Jackson,51, cleared her throat, turned her microphone on and spoke for herself. “If I am confirmed, I commit to you that I will work productively to support and defend the Constitution and this grand experiment of American democracy that has endured over these past 246 years,” Judge Jackson, who currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said in opening remarks that lasted about 13 minutes. “I have been a judge for nearly a decade now, and I take that responsibility and my duty to be independent very seriously,” she said. “I decide cases from a neutral posture. I evaluate the facts and I interpret and apply the law to the facts of the case before me without fear or favor, consistent with my judicial oath.” As the day began, some Democrats in the room were celebrating her nomination. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, who had no formal role in the proceedings, held up her phone to record as Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey spoke about the sheer joy he felt at a moment that he called, simply, “not a normal day for America.” Among the Republicans, there were early flashes of gentility: Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the committee’s senior Republican, pulled out a chair for Judge Jackson just before the hearing began. But that tone quickly receded as Republicans stressed that they would not personally attack Judge Jackson, while in the same breath accusing her of being lenient on child sex abuse defendants and sex offenders. Several also suggested, without evidence, that she was aligned with progressive groups that are interested in adding justices to the Supreme Court. Democrats saw the offensive coming, and tried to pre-empt the criticism in their prepared remarks. “These baseless charges are unfair,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the committee’s chairman, adding, “They fly in the face of pledges my colleagues made that they would approach your nomination with civility and respect.
