Washington – The Senate voted to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson In the Supreme Court on Thursday, she further cemented her place in history as the first black woman to serve on the country’s highest court.
Jackson’s confirmation as the 116th judge in U.S. history received bipartisan support, with 53 to 47 final votes in the upper house.. Three Republicans, Sense. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah have joined 50 Democrats to support President Biden’s nominee. Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman and the first woman of color to play this role, presided over the Senate during the vote.
“In this vote, Yes is 53. No 47 and this nomination has been confirmed,” Harris said with a round of applause from the senators.
Jackson’s appointment to the High Court is likely to be a significant element of Mr Biden’s legacy, and the Supreme Court has identified him as the first opportunity to make his mark. However, Jackson will not immediately take the bench, as he will be replaced by Justice Stephen Breyer. Ready to retire At the end of the Supreme Court’s term this summer.
Mr. Biden watched the vote with Jackson in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. The photographers are embracing the two as the Senate passes the threshold required for its confirmation.
Susan Walsh / AP
Ahead of the vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “This is a wonderful day, a happy day, an inspiring day for the Senate, the Supreme Court and the United States.” “Today is a bright light, and let us hope it is a metaphor, indicating many more bright lights.”
Approval of Jackson’s nomination by an equally divided Senate limited the confirmation process that was marked by Republicans to portray him as a soft-on-crime activist judge who would legislate from the bench.
Criticism of Jackson’s sentencing record in the child pornography case while he was a federal trial court judge has failed to derail the White House and Democratic Senate leaders’ efforts to drum up bipartisan support for Jackson’s nomination. Confirmation of the Supreme Court. The allegations, however, provided Republicans with food like theirs Own position As a law-enforcement party before the mid-November elections.
After Mr. Biden, the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate leaders moved quickly to begin the confirmation process. Jackson announced As his pick for the Supreme Court in late February. Through the Jackson election, Mr. Biden fulfilled his promise to nominate the first black woman to the high court since the 2020 presidential campaign.
During a four-day confirmation hearing in March, Jackson endured nearly 24 hours of questioning from 22 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, after which the panel stalled on Monday approving his nomination on party lines.
Tie 11-11 vote Judicial Committee A systematic vote is forced In the full Senate to take Jackson’s nomination forward. When the upper house voted to remove Jackson’s nomination from the committee, with three Republicans joining Democrats in the vote, the effort turned out to be a bitterly biased recent confirmation fight and almost unified GOP opposition to his appointment.
Ahead of the vote, Murkowski announced his support for Jackson in a statement, saying his decision partially restrained his rejection of “the erosive politicization of the review process for Supreme Court nominees, which is getting worse on both sides of the aisle. And further detached from reality over the years.”
Jackson, considered the country’s second-strongest court, will join the Supreme Court after working for nearly a year in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In his first term in the High Court, Jackson will hold a hearing Pair of cases involving admission policy At Harvard College and the University of North Carolina, as well Rearrangement And Religious freedom Controversy has Jackson Promised to abandon himself From the Harvard legal battle, because he is a member of the school’s Board of Overseas, is one of its two governing bodies.
While his appointment will not change the ideological structure of the Supreme Court, which boasts of a 6-3 conservative majority, Jackson will be the second-junior judge at 51, likely securing decades of service. Her appointment marks the first time that two African Americans will sit together in the Supreme Court, and for the first time, four women will work together in the High Court.
Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Jackson brought professional diversity to the bench as an assistant public defender and served on the Federal Trial Court in Washington. He has never been a Supreme Court judge to act as a public defender, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor is the only current member of the court to have served in a U.S. district court. He was also a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission and worked in private practice after graduating from Harvard and Harvard Law Schools.
During her confirmation hearing, Jackson showed the arc of the nation’s history through her life and the story of her parents – from her parents attending an isolated school in Florida to becoming the country’s first black woman. The Supreme Court “in one generation.” Commenting on his legal career, he Be committed to be An independent lawyer who approached the case from a position of neutrality.
“I will decide the case in a neutral manner. I evaluate the facts and I interpret and apply the case information in front of me without fear or favor, consistent with my judicial oath, “he told the senators at his confirmation hearing.” It gives me the power to decide cases and disputes and I know that my judicial role is further limited by the careful adherence to the precedent. ”
However, these assurances did little to persuade most Republican senators.
Many took issue with the refusal to label Jackson’s judicial philosophy, which he described as a multi-pronged approach, and were reluctant to take a position on adding seats to the Supreme Court, even as they acknowledged his legal merits. Jackson’s most frequent criticism, however, focuses on his punishment of perpetrators in child pornography cases, which GOP senators have repeatedly claimed is under federal guidelines.
“What a worrying process for the Senate,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor during a review of Jackson’s record. “In Judge Jackson’s courtroom, the general legal text and the clear congressional intentions matched his personal policy disagreement with what the judge acknowledged.”
South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsay Graham said Monday that Jackson would not get a confirmation hearing if Republicans controlled the Senate. He further predicted that if the GOP regained a majority in the upper house, the judicial nominees nominated by the Democrats would be rejected if they were considered too liberal.
“We’re supposed to be like trained seals here, you clap when you hire a liberal,” Graham said. “It won’t work.”
The South Carolina senator was one of three Republicans, along with Collins and Murkowski, to support Jackson’s nomination on the DC circuit, but he wants to vote against confirming him in the Supreme Court.
Democrats, meanwhile, wanted to highlight the historical nature of Jackson’s nomination and final approval by the Senate throughout the ratification process.
“By confirming to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in the country’s highest court, we are not only making history, we are carrying a great American heritage, we are promoting one of the best and brightest legal minds in our country to an honorary position of service,” said Dick, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Dr. Durbin. “No one else deserves this high honor. As we learned last month, he is the best of us. “
