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By Lisa Mascaro<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The historic Senate hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated for the Supreme Court, have been joyful, combative and clarifying, putting on display the breadth of the nation\u2019s partisan divide and the unresolved problems of its past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fourth and final day of the Senate Judiciary Committee\u2019s consideration of Jackson wrapped up Thursday with several hours of testimony from outside experts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The American Bar Association\u2019s standing committee on the federal judiciary has afforded its highest rating, \u201cwell qualified,\u201d to the Harvard-educated Jackson. A junior high school friend gushed over the \u201csupernova\u201d debate team champion. Skeptics, including the Alabama\u2019s attorney general, warned that her views on crime and policing are \u201coutside the mainstream.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet in the 50-50 Senate, where a Trump-era rules change means it is no longer necessary to muster broad support to confirm Supreme Court nominees, the hearings have become less about the vote ahead and more about framing the politics of the eventual outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Democrats are on track to confirm President Joe Biden\u2019s pick, with a vote expected by time senators leave for a scheduled spring recess April 8.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some takeaways from Day Four of the weeklong hearing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reviewing The Record<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOutstanding, excellent, superior, superb.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ABA committee gave Jackson the same highest rating that has been bestowed on most recent Supreme Court nominees, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The committee\u2019s chair, Ann Claire Williams, testified on the review of some 250-legal professionals on Jackson\u2019s record. Asked how Jackson\u2019s integrity was viewed, Williams said: \u201cThose are the comments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Much the way senators opposed to the first Black nominee to the court, Thurgood Marshall, a half-century ago portrayed the storied civil rights lawyer as soft on crime in his work defending Black people, Republicans have spotlighted Jackson\u2019s sentencings in criminal cases, they show too much \u201cempathy\u201d for defendants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A witness for the Republican side, Attorney General Steven T. Marshall of Alabama, said he believes Jackson shows more deference to criminals appearing in her courtroom than she does victims. He said her views of law enforcement reforms are \u201coutside the mainstream.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Republicans are trying to link Jackson to the left-leaning \u201cdefund the police\u201d movements, but it\u2019s unclear if the approach is working. The judge has backing from the nation\u2019s largest law enforcement organization, the Fraternal Order of Police, and she has spoken emotionally about her brother and uncle who worked as police officers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump\u2019s Influence Hovers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Donald Trump is gone from the White House, but his influence over Republicans endures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One witness called by Republicans was Alessandra Serano, the chief legal officer of Operation Underground Railroad, a Utah based anti-trafficking nonprofit group. It is under criminal investigation in the state for exaggerating its role in law enforcement arrests involving child predators, in order to fundraise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The organization has become popular online and found success raising money off of conspiracy theories that have are popular among suburban mothers and groups that arose out of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which casts Trump as a hero fighting a cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibals operating a child sex trafficking ring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Republicans focus on Jackson\u2019s rulings in the child pornography cases, they are tapping into this strain of the GOP and its popularity among backers of the former president, drumming up voter interest before the November elections that will determine control of Congress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From retirement in Florida, Trump has insisted, falsely, that he won the 2020 election, a belief shared by many Republicans, despite dozens of court cases and independent reviews that have rejected GOP claims of a rigged election. Trump is considering another run for president in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At one point Thursday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., tried to air some of these points. He asked Alabama\u2019s Marshall whether Biden was the \u201cduly elected president\u201d of the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marshall replied that Biden was the president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pressed if the witness was purposefully omitting the words \u201cduly elected,\u201d Marshall simply reiterated: \u201cI\u2019m answering the question. He is the president of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alabama, with Marshall, was among other states joining in a lawsuit challenging the results of the 2020 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Next Civil Rights Era<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Senate hearings have been filled each day with some of the leading civil rights leaders celebrating, as Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., put it, the \u201cjoy\u201d of reaching this milestone in American history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Testifying Thursday, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Joyce Beatty, said Booker \u201cspoke not only to Black America, but to America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beatty, D-Ohio, put Jackson\u2019s moment alongside those of civil rights icon Rosa Parks and other Americans and urged senators to consider what the judge\u2019s confirmation to the high court would mean for the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are no longer looking at 50-65 years ago,\u201d she said, of the past era of civil rights battles, \u201cbut yet we\u2019re still fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Counting The Votes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Senators no longer need bipartisan cooperation to confirm judicial nominees, after rules changes that allow a simple 51-vote majority for the lifetime appointment to the court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With Jackson\u2019s nomination almost assured by Democrats, who hold a slim majority in the 50-50 chamber with Vice President Kamala Harris able to break a tie, Republicans unable to stop the judge\u2019s confirmation at least want sow doubt in the outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Ted Cruz of Texas and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee have led the charge, quizzing the federal judge about her views on issues of race and crime, amplifying election-year grievances and a backlash over changing culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jackson is the first federal public defender to be nominated to the Supreme Court and her efforts representing those accused of crimes, alongside her work as a federal judge, have provided a lengthy record of difficult cases for senators to review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jackson has presented herself a judge who relies on method, not judicial philosophy, to remain neutral as she works to \u201cstay in my lane.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If confirmed, Jackson would also become the sixth female justice in the court\u2019s history and the fourth among the nine members of the current court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ___<\/p>\n\n\n\n Associated Press writers Colleen Long and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Originally published at AP<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Lisa Mascaro The historic Senate hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated for the Supreme Court, have been joyful, combative and clarifying, putting on display the breadth of the nation\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[2268,2209,379],"class_list":["post-6774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-civil-rights","tag-ketanji-brown-jackson","tag-supreme-court"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n