Ketanji Brown Jackson stressed that she will remain in her “lane” of the justice system and not form politics when she is confirmed by the US Supreme Court, as she has closed the Republican critique of her legal record.
“I’m particularly conscious of not talking about political issues because I’m so committed to staying in my trail of the system,” said Jackson, who was nominated by Joe Biden, president, to fill the seat that will be vacated if Stephen Breyer steps in. down at the end of the current term.
“I believe judges are not politicians,” she added.
Jackson tried to emphasize her neutrality to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday as hearings for her nomination began on her second day. “My record shows my impartiality,” she said.
Republican and Democratic members of the committee largely praised Jackson’s background. But Republican senators have tried to raise questions about their legal careers, with Lindsey Graham, a senator for South Carolina, presenting the most confrontational questions surrounding her past work related to Guantánamo Bay, the U.S. military base in Cuba, which houses a prison for prisoners and the successor to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
He criticized Jackson for her work in drafting court documents on behalf of her clients, who opposed the periodic review of Guantánamo detainees and called on them to either try or release them.
“I’m just trying to understand what made you get involved in this thing,” he said, to which Jackson replied that was not her own argument.
“If you are a lawyer and you have clients who come to you, whether they pay or not, you represent their positions in court,” she said.
Graham’s request continued to escalate as Dick Durbin, the Democratic senator from Illinois and Senate Judiciary Committee chairman who presided over Jackson’s hearing, joined the heated exchange.
“I hope they all die in prison when they return to kill Americans,” Graham said of the Guantánamo detainee before picking up his bottle of soda and storming it.
Durbin responded by saying that the committee should not associate Jackson with his work, which represents Guantánamo prisoners when working in a federal public defense office in the early 2000s “as inconsistent with our constitutional values.”
Jackson said she filed four such cases after the Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that Guantánamo detainees could face a legal challenge, stressing that public defenders do not select their clients. “As a federal public defender, you stand up for the constitutional value of representation,” she said.
If confirmed, Jackson would be the first Supreme Court to act as a public defender – lawyers representing criminal defendants, typically those who cannot afford their own representation.
Her supporters hailed this experience as a vital prospect for the Supreme Court, but it also exposed her to some Republican attacks on the individuals she represented.
Jackson also addressed accusations by some Republicans that she had given guilty sentences to defendants and child pornography cases. She said U.S. judges were “adjusting their sentences to take into account the changing circumstances” surrounding the format of pornographic material in the Internet age.
“But it says nothing about the courts’ view of the seriousness of this insult,” Jackson said.
Responding to accusations that suggest their sentences endangered children, she said: “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Jackson also responded to claims that she had been “soft on crime”, saying that as one with family members and the lawyer, including a brother who worked as a police officer, “crime and the impact on the community and the need for detention, which for me are not abstract concepts or political slogans ”.
Senators in the Justice Committee will continue to question Jackson Tuesday and Wednesday. Once the hearing is complete, the committee will vote on whether to continue its nomination to the full Senate for a final vote.
Biden watched part of the auditions, according to Chris Meagher, deputy White House press secretary. The president, a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “appreciated Judge Jackson’s commitment to staying on track with the judges provided for in the Constitution, and emphasized the importance of the precedent,” Meagher said.
Biden “was also struck as she quickly dismantled conspiracy theories that were put forward in bad faith,” he added.
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