Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing: Day 2

Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson speaks during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s second day of confirmation hearings and first full day of questioning featured explanations of her approach as a judge, discussions of abstract legal concepts that can be pivotal in controversial Supreme Court cases, and her defense of a sentencing record that Republicans have claimed wasn’t adequately harsh on certain crimes.

Democrats gave Jackson plenty of opportunity to push back on the GOP attacks, while letting her discuss the background that will make her a unique addition to the Supreme Court.

Republicans, who on Monday vowed to take a high-minded tone in the proceedings, nonetheless grilled her on the issues that resonate with their culture war messaging ahead of this year’s midterms.

Tomorrow, the third day of confirmation hearings will start at 9 a.m. ET and the remaining two senators from the panel — Democrat Jon Ossoff of Georgia and GOP Thom Tillis of North Carolina — will have 30 minutes to ask questions. Then, committee members are expected to be be allowed 20 minutes each for a second round of questioning.

Here’s a look at some key takeaways from Tuesday’s session:

Jackson gives a view into how she approaches her job: Facing GOP skepticism for not aligning herself with a specific judicial philosophy, Jackson gave new details about the way she approaches her job and the “methodology” she uses for deciding a case.

The three-step process she described involved clearing her mind of any preconceived notions about the case, receiving the various inputs — the written briefs, the factual record, the hearings — she’ll need to decide a case, and embarking on an interpretation of the law that hews to “the constraints” on her role as a judge.

She said she was trying to “to figure out what the words mean as they were intended by the people who wrote them.”

Jackson pushes back on claims about her record on child porn cases: The judge finally had the chance on Tuesday to address what have been the most contentious allegations levied against her, telling the committee of claims she’s soft on child porn offenders that “nothing could be further from the truth.”

Later on in the hearing, she said she still has nightmares about the witness in one of the cases Republicans are now scrutinized, adding, “These crimes are, are horrible. And so I take them very seriously, just as I did all of the crimes, but especially crimes against children.”

Republicans have zeroed in on what they say is Jackson’s tendency to issue sentences in these cases that came below the sentencing guidelines – a pattern that puts her in the mainstream of judges. Less than a third of the sentences issued in non-production child pornography cases fell within the guidelines in 2019.

When she was being grilled by Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, Jackson noted that the guidelines are just a starting point for judges.

GOP leans into culture war issues ahead of midterms: Broad culture war topics that Republicans are hitting Democrats on ahead of the midterms made their way into GOP questions for Jackson.

Cruz, for example, asked Jackson several questions about “critical race theory” — a concept that Jackson said “doesn’t come up in my work.”

“It’s never something that I have studied or relied on, and it wouldn’t be something that I would rely on if I was on the Supreme Court,” she said.

Cruz tried to connect it to Jackson through a presentation she made as vice chair of the US Sentencing Commission, in which Jackson said she listed it among a “laundry list of different academic disciplines that I said relate to sentencing policy.” He also raised it in the context of children’s books taught at Georgetown Day School, where Jackson is on the board. Jackson said that board does not control the school’s curriculum.

Abstract questions try to hint how she would approach controversial cases: GOP senators probed Jackson’s approach to abstract legal ideas that sound academic but that could be pivotal in how she’d decide controversial cases.

Cornyn raised the concept of “unenumerated rights” — meaning the rights not explicitly written in the Constitution’s text but that the court has interpreted to be covered by the Constitution’s protections.

Utah Sen. Mike Lee likewise focused some of his questioning on the 9th Amendment. Its language contemplates unenumerated rights, and he asked Jackson how judges should go about weighing what rights could flow from it.

Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, the Judiciary Committee chairman, said that he is “hopeful” Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson will receive bipartisan support.

Asked by CNN’s Lauren Fox whether Jackson needs to push back harder against Republican charges that she has been too lenient in sentencing child pornography cases, Durbin said Jackson had already “covered that ten different ways.”

“For those who want to listen, she’s given the answer,” added Durbin. The Illinois Democrat said that sentencing those cases is an “extraordinary challenge for every judge because Congress won’t touch this hot-button issue” and update its guidance for judges.

“To pick this out, and to say that this fine lady, this fine mother, this great judge is somehow soft when it comes to child pornography is an incredible statement,” said Durbin. “The people who are making it are just sticking with it, even as their approaches are being discredited.”

More context: Democrats can confirm Jackson to the high court on the strength of their narrow Senate majority, with 50 votes and Vice President Kamala Harris breaking a tie. The party does not need any Republican support for successful confirmation, but if any Republicans do vote to confirm, it would give the White House a chance to tout a bipartisan confirmation.

It’s not yet clear, however, whether Jackson will receive any votes from Republicans.

When the Senate voted to confirm her last year to fill a vacancy on a powerful DC-based appellate court, three Republican senators voted with Democrats in favor: Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

CNN’s Clare Foran and Alex Rogers contributed reporting to this post.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said that her love of law from an early age is why she would be honored to serve on the Supreme Court.

During today’s confirmation hearing, Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat from California, asked Jackson about why wants the job. “There’s a very fundamental question that hasn’t been asked,” Padilla said.

“Fundamentally what this hearing is today, it’s a job interview. It’s a very public and very thorough job interview, as it should be… the first question I have for you is, so why would you want this job?”

Jackson said that her father, going back to law school when she was a young girl, inspired her passion for the law and that serving on the Supreme Court would be an honor.

“I’ve spoken many times about the fact that I came to love the law starting as early as four years old watching my dad study when he went back to law school when I was a child and I honestly never thought that there was anything that one could really do because I was so enamored of my father and so proud of his decision to follow his dream after I was born,” Jackson said.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson responds to questions during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

Facing GOP skepticism for not aligning herself with a specific judicial philosophy,  Ketanji Brown Jackson gave new details about the way she approaches her job and the “methodology” she uses for deciding a case.

“I am acutely aware that as a judge in our system I have limited power and I am trying in every case to stay in my lane,” she said.

The three-step process she described involved clearing her mind of any preconceived notions about the case, receiving the various inputs — the written briefs, the factual record, the hearings — she’ll need to decide a case, and embarking on an interpretation of the law that hews to “the constraints” on her role as a judge.

She said she was trying to “to figure out what the words mean as they were intended by the people who wrote them.”

This description of her methodology was not enough to satisfy Republican questions about her judicial philosophy.

But what does this term mean and why has it come up so often today? It refers to the type of framework a judge uses to analyze a case of constitutional interpretation. An originalist approach, which is favored by conservatives, seeks to interpret the Constitution by how the framers would have understood the words at the time they were drafted.

Some progressives have sought to chart what has been called a “Living Constitution” approach, which seeks to interpret the general principles in the Constitution in a way that is applicable to contemporary circumstances.

Even as she answered Nebraska Republican Sen. Ben Sasse’s questions about the dueling approaches, Jackson declined to explicitly align herself with one or the other, noting that constitutional interpretation did not come up every often in the cases she was deciding as a lower court judge.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has been answering questions from senators for more than 12 hours on day two of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

Jackson has fielded questions on an array of topics from her record on crime, her judicial philosophy and her family background.

So far, she has been questioned by more than a dozen senators during today’s hearing.

More on today’s hearing: Senators may ask questions of the nominee for 30 minutes each, according to the schedule outlined by the committee. The questioning is expected to stretch late into the evening. On Wednesday, lawmakers will be allowed 20 minutes each for a second round of questioning.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin listens during the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Tuesday evening.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin told reporters as he left the confirmation hearing for the dinner break that the issue of sentencing guidelines was the responsibility of Congress and that Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson “did the right thing.”

“She’s doing what 80% of the judges across America do, because Congress, Congress has not done its job. That’s the one thing that Republicans just won’t concede,” he said. 

Asked about Hawley’s claim that Jackson seemed sympathetic to the defendant in the child sex abuse images case the Missouri Republican brought up, Durbin replied, “She did the right thing. It’s a tough job. And under the circumstances, we didn’t help. Congress dropped the ball, still has for 15 years plus.”

“So you know, I don’t think they’ll ever concede that point. But she’s not alone. And she’s certainly not unique. 80% of the judges across America are going exactly through the same thing that she’s gone through,” he added.

On whether Hawley’s line of questioning would affect Republican swing votes, Durbin said, “No, I don’t think it will change a single Republican vote.”

After using it for most of the day as a refrain on several occasions to describe how she approaches her job as a judge, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson — in response to a question from Louisiana GOP Sen. John Kennedy — explained what she means when she says that she seeks to “stay in her lane.”

Jackson has used the phrase multiple times in the hearing, starting in the early question she got about her methodology as a judge, as well as when she explained why she wouldn’t answer questions about court packing.

Given the opportunity to do so by Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, Ketanji Brown Jackson discussed her family background, at times getting emotional when speaking about the values her family instilled in her and the lessons she learned from them to press forward.

She recalled how her parents went to historically Black colleges after attending segregated lower schools, and how their “hard work” taught her “perseverance.”

“My parents moved to Washington, DC, because this is where it all started, for them, in terms of having new freedoms,” she told Booker, the committee’s sole Black member,  referring to the “sea change” for African Americans when civil rights legislation passed in the 1960s.

“I was born here, on that hope and dream. I was born here with an African name that my parents gave me to, to demonstrate their pride, their pride in who they were and their pride and hope in what I could be,” she continued.

Of her grandparents, she said that they were the “hardest working people I’ve ever known and who just got up every day, put one foot after the other and provided for their families and made sure that their children went to college, even though they never had those opportunities.”

She said that in this “historic moment” of her Supreme Court nomination she reflects on them and that “I stand on the shoulders of people from that generation.”

“And I focus at times on my faith when I’m going through hard times. Those are the kinds of things that I learned from my grandmother who used to have those family dinners and bring us all together,” she told committee.

Sen. Cory Booker shakes hands with Johnny Brown, father of Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, during a break in her confirmation hearing Tuesday evening.

Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, praised Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s background and record during today’s hearing.

Booker noted that Jackson’s nomination is supported by many groups including law enforcement agencies and Republican and Democrat judges. He said that he “trusts” Jackson with the the safety of his family and state.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is taking a break for dinner.

The following senators are expected to question Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson next in this order:

Here are key moments from today’s hearing so far:

Jackson’s record on crime: Jackson was asked by Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, about accusations that she is “soft on crime or even anti law enforcement” because she worked as a public defender during her career.

Jackson went on to say that as a lawyer and as a citizen, “I care deeply about our Constitution and the rights that make us free.” 

She said that it’s important to her that people are “held accountable for committing crimes, but we have to do so fairly, under our Constitution.” 

On Roe v. Wade: Jackson said that the two Supreme Court decisions that secured the right to abortion for women in America are “settled law” of the court.

On representing Guantanamo detainees: Sen. Lindsey Graham, the only Republican member of the committee who voted for Ketanji Brown Jackson for the DC Circuit last year, told CNN it’s “fair to say” he sees red flags with her nomination in an interview after his first round of grilling the nominee.

He criticized her explanation of defending Guantanamo detainees as an attorney, which was the subject of a tense line of questions for Jackson.

On critical race theory: GOP Sen. Ted Cruz pressed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on her opinions on critical race theory, referring to a speech she gave at the University of Michigan in 2020 where she mentioned Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project.

More on today’s hearing: Senators may ask questions of the nominee for 30 minutes each, according to the schedule outlined by the committee. The questioning is expected to stretch late into the evening. On Wednesday, lawmakers will be allowed 20 minutes each for a second round of questioning.

Read more about the events in today’s hearing here.

Sen. John Cornyn watches as Sen. Lindsey Graham questions Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson was criticized by two Republican senators on Tuesday over language they claimed she had used in the past while challenging the indefinite detention of clients who were being held without charges at the Guantanamo Bay military prison.

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina alleged that Jackson had gone “just too far” in, he claimed, calling the government “a war criminal in pursuing charges against a terrorist.” GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas asked Jackson “why in the world,” while representing a member of the Taliban, “would you call Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and George W. Bush war criminals in a legal filing? It seems so out of character for you.”

Facts First: Both Graham and Cornyn left out important context. Specifically, neither mentioned that Jackson’s allegation of war crimes was about torture. Also, Jackson didn’t explicitly use the phrase “war criminal.”

Here’s what happened.

While serving as a federal public defender from 2005 to 2007, Jackson was assigned the cases of four detainees at Guantanamo Bay. (“Federal public defenders don’t get to pick their clients,” she noted during the hearing on Tuesday.) In habeas corpus petitions she filed along with a colleague in 2005 on behalf of the four clients — after the Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo detainees could contest the legality of their detention in US federal courts — Jackson argued that the detainees had been tortured and subjected to other inhumane treatment.  

Jackson and her colleague then argued that the acts of the US “respondents” they named in their petitions – acts they described as “directing, ordering, confirming, ratifying, and/or conspiring to bring about the torture and other inhumane treatment” — “constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity” under the Alien Tort Statute and that they violate the Geneva Conventions.

Bush and Rumsfeld were two of the four respondents Jackson and her colleague named in each of the filings, along with two commanders at Guantanamo. However, Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, CNN legal analyst and expert on military justice, said that since the rules for these kinds of filings essentially required the President and Secretary of Defense to be named as respondents — Jackson’s filings made clear Bush and Rumsfeld were being sued in their official capacity — “it’s more than a little misleading to suggest that claims in that lawsuit are necessarily claims about the named respondents personally.” 

Jackson and her colleague noted in each filing that “all references” to the actions of respondents were meant to cover actions performed by “respondents’ agents or employees, other government agents or employees or contractor employees.” A White House official said in an email on Tuesday that “Judge Jackson never filed habeas petitions that called either President Bush or Secretary Rumsfeld war criminals.”  

In her response to Graham, Jackson said she didn’t remember accusing the government of acting as a war criminal but that, in habeas petitions, she was “making allegations to preserve issues on behalf of my clients.” In response to Cornyn, she said she was making arguments on behalf of her clients, would have to take a look at the specifics of what he was talking about, and “did not intend to disparage the President or the Secretary of Defense.”

None of Jackson’s four Guantanamo clients was ever convicted. Each of them was eventually released from Guantanamo.

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing has resumed after taking a short break.

Senators will continue to question Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson when the hearing resumes. GOP Sen. Tom Cotton will question her next.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson listens to Sen. Josh Hawley during her confirmation hearing Tuesday.

GOP Sen. Josh Hawley focused his claims about Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson”s sentencing record in child porn cases on one particular case, known as US v. Hawkins, in which she sentenced the offender to three months.

In the 2013 case, prosecutors sought 24 months – a recommendation well below the 97-121 month guidelines in the case. Jackson and her supporters have defended her approach to these cases by noting that courts have discretion to deviate from the guidelines, In these types of cases in particular – because the many judges view the guidelines as out of date – sentences that vary from the guidelines are quite common, and CNN review showed that Jackson’s approach to these kinds of cases did not make her an outlier among judges.

Throughout the questioning, however, Hawley sought to keep the discussion zeroed in on the specifics of the Hawkins case, rather than how Jackson’s record fits into the bigger picture. He rattled off the amount of materials the offender was found to have possessed and went into detail about the graphic acts some of those materials depicted. He also read her a quote of Jackson’s he said he pulled from the sentencing hearing transcript. He noted government court filings describing videos where the victims were as young as eight, 11 and 12 years old.

In his account, she said at the hearing it was not appropriate to increase the penalty on the basis of the images of prepubescent victims, because those “circumstances exist in many cases, if not most, and don’t signal an especially heinous or egregious child pornography offense.

To Jackson, Hawley said he was having “a hard time wrapping my head” that comment, given the facts of the case. Stressing that all cases of this kind are “heinous” and “egregious.”

Jackson defended her judgment. From her recollection of the case, she said the defendant had just graduated high school and that some of the materials involved older teenage victims who were close in age to the offender.

She later noted that prosecutors and probation offices are also deviating from the guidelines in their recommendations.

“This is a particular area where the commission has seen an enormous amount of disparity and is in fact asked Congress to come back and address, to help judges who are looking at these cases to be able to rely on the guidelines,” she said, prompting Hawley to respond: “Which Congress has declined to do.”

“Senator, in that case, we have the statute that Congress has enacted concerning penalties and we have judges who are doing their level best to make sure that people are held accountable as they need to be in our society in a fair and just way,” Jackson said.

Sen. Ted Cruz holds up a book as he questions Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing.

During Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing today, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz pressed Jackson about critical race theory.

Jackson responded, “It doesn’t come up in my work as it’s never something that I have studied or relied on, and it wouldn’t be something that I would rely on if I was on the Supreme Court.”

The GOP senator grilled Jackson on books about racism and critical race theory that are available at Georgetown Day School, an institution where she’s a board member. Jackson said that she was not aware of the books Cruz had mentioned and maintained that the subject is not something she would use as a Supreme Court justice or something that has been relevant to her as a judge.

Phillip continued, “This is exactly the kind of thing that I think some Republicans have been concerned about because one of the problems with Sen. Cruz’s questioning of her along these lines was that he asked her about Georgetown Day School and it gave her an opportunity to explain that when she talks about social justice in relation to Georgetown Day School it is because that school was founded explicitly to integrate schools during a time when the law required that public schools be racially segregated. So, he kind of teed up a softball for her to really sort of undermine this whole avenue of questioning.”

Watch Phillip’s full analysis here:

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Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has already been confirmed by the Senate three times for prior roles.

As lawmakers continue to question her in the Senate Judiciary Committee today, they have been providing some hints on how they may vote.

Jackson, 51, currently sits on DC’s federal appellate court and had been considered the front-runner for the vacancy since Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement in January.

President Biden, who vowed during the 2020 campaign to select a Black woman to the Supreme Court should a vacancy arise, had already elevated Jackson once, appointing her last year to the appeals court in DC, which is considered the second most powerful federal court in the country.

Because of that appellate appointment, she’s already been through a vetting process that included an interview with the President himself. Last June, the Senate confirmed Jackson by a 53-44 vote.

Here’s how lawmakers on the committee voted then:

For her Supreme Court confirmation this time around, no Democratic senators have signaled they will oppose Jackson, and some Republicans have expressed openness to supporting her.

In the 50-50 Senate, Vice President Kamala Harris could break a tied vote and confirm Jackson to the Supreme Court.

CNN’s Shawna Mizelle and Alex Rogers contributed reporting to this post.

US Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson responds during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

We are now at the halfway point of today’s questioning of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The second day of her confirmation hearings kicked off at 9 a.m. ET, and Jackson has been defending her judicial record as she’s faced intense questioning from Republican senators.

Republicans have attempted to portray the nominee as weak on crime by zeroing in on some of her past defense work and have raised questions over her judicial philosophy as they warn against activism, and prescribing policy outcomes, from the bench.

Jackson addressed and disputed those criticisms by stressing her concern for public safety and the rule of law, both as a judge and an American. She argued that she approaches her work in an impartial way and that personal opinions do not play a role.

When pressed by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who serves as the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Jackson sidestepped a question related to whether she supported expanding the Supreme Court to include more than nine justices.

“It is a policy question for Congress,” she said. “I am particularly mindful of not speaking to policy issues because I am so committed to staying in my lane.”

Democrats have so far used the hearings to praise Brown — who would be the first Black woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice — as an exceptionally qualified, trail-blazing nominee whose depth and breadth of experience, including as a federal public defender, would add a valuable and unique perspective to the bench.

Read about more key moments from today’s hearing so far here.

GOP Sen. Ben Sasse is questioning Jackson right now, and here’s who will question her next:

Senators may ask questions of the nominee for 30 minutes each, according to the schedule outlined by the committee. The questioning is expected to stretch late into the evening.

CNN’s Clare Foran contributed reporting to this post.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks to reporters following a lunch meeting with Senate Democrats at the US Capitol on March 22.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called some of his Republican colleagues “respectful” in their questioning of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson but told reporters that others have attacked her unfairly.

Asked specifically about GOP Sen. Josh Hawley’s charges that she is soft on crime because of how she sentenced a series of child pornographers, Schumer said, “look some Republicans have treated her respectfully, but not everybody.”

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz questions Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz pressed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on her opinions on critical race theory, referring to a speech she gave at the University of Michigan in 2020 where she mentioned Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project.

Cruz continued to press Jackson on the subject and whether it should be taught to young children in schools.

The GOP senator grilled Jackson on books about racism and critical race theory that are available at Georgetown Day School, an institution that she’s a board member of. Jackson said that she was not aware of the books Cruz had mentioned and maintained that the subject is not something she would use as a Supreme Court justice or something that has been relevant to her as a judge.

“Senator, I have not reviewed any of those books, any of those ideas. They don’t come up in my work as a judge, which I am, respectfully, here, to address,” she said.

Watch the exchange between GOP Sen. Ted Cruz and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson over critical race theory:

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Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson responded to the concerted effort of GOP senators to characterize her as being soft when it comes to sentencing on sex crimes, saying, “As a mother, these cases involving sex crimes against children are harrowing.” 

She said that as a trial judge she has had to deal with graphic evidence in these cases that “keep you up at night” because you’re “seeing the worst of humanity.” 

Repeated discussions about “stare decisis” are ways senators can probe Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s willingness to overturn Supreme Court precedent without asking her about specific rulings (which Jackson is unlikely to comment on).

As a lower court judge, Jackson is supposed to follow Supreme Court precedent, but on the Supreme Court – as senators have noted this week – she as a justice would have the ability to overturn those precedents.

Stare decisis is the legal concept that discourages justices from overruling precedent unless certain conditions are meant. The principle sets out that, even if a justice thinks a precedent is wrong, there are other factors he or she should consider before voting to overrule. Part of the idea is that, for society to function, law must remain relatively stable and not swing drastically with changes of the court’s make up. Among the other factors the Supreme Court should consider, under the principle, such as what had changed since the original precedent was handed down and what risks overturning it would pose in the public’s confidence in the law.

“Sometimes the Supreme Court will issue a ruling and determine later that it’s not actually doing what the court intended, and whether or not there are new facts or new understanding of the facts,” Jackson said, in response to questions from Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar. “Those various criteria are what the court looks at to decide whether or not to overturn a precedent, and they would be what I would look at if I were confirmed to the Supreme Court.”

In recent Supreme Court decisions overturning precedent, the liberal minority has accused the conservative majority ignoring some of the principles of stare decisis to overturn precedents that conservatives don’t like.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar questions Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked during the hearing about journalists and the importance of freedom of the press and the protection of the First Amendment. She said that freedom of the press “is about the dissemination of information, which is necessary for a democratic form of government.” 

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, noted that the Supreme Court ruled unanimously for the press in the landmark case, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, holding that when “newspapers report on public officials, they’re only liable for untrue statements that are published with knowledge or reckless disregard for whether the statement was false.” Klobuchar asked Jackson if she agrees that those principles are just as relevant today as they were when the Supreme Court first decided that case in 1964.

In a follow-up question, Klobuchar asked Jackson how she would approach a case that sought to limit or overturn the central holding Times v. Sullivan.

“Any time the court is asked to revisit a precedent, there are criteria that the court uses to decide whether or not to overrule a precedent,” Jackson said.

She said that the Supreme Court “should maintain its precedents for the law” but if the court is asked to revisit a precedent, its criteria are “whether the precedent is wrong and, in fact, egregiously wrong, the court has said, whether there’s been reliance on that precedent, whether the — there are other cases that are similar to the precedent or that relied on the precedent that have now shifted so that the precedent is no longer on firm footing.” 

“Sometimes the Supreme Court will issue a ruling and determine later that it’s not actually doing what the court intended, and whether or not there are new facts or new understanding of the facts,” Jackson noted.

Read more about this here:

Related article Gorsuch and Thomas call to revisit landmark First Amendment case

Sen. Mike Lee questions Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

An extended line of GOP Sen. Mike Lee questions about “unenumerated rights” in the Constitution may have seemed academic, but Lee was implicitly getting at some of the most controversial and impactful areas of constitutional interpretation that the Supreme Court deals with.

On Tuesday, Lee drew Jackson’s attention to the Constitution’s Ninth Amendment, which says “numeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Lee asked Jackson what rights had been identified as flowing from that amendment, to which she responded, “as I understand it has not identified any particular rights flowing directly from the Ninth Amendment; although, as you said, the text of the amendment suggests that there are some rights that are not enumerated.”

Noting the “considerable debate” around how courts should go about determining such rights, he asked Jackson about how courts should go about interpreting what rights can be derived from that provision. He wondered whether it’s been left purely to the discretion of the Supreme Court and what the justices “deem appropriate at the moment,” rather than historical precedent.

Jackson said that “one of the constraints” that binds her approach is the text of the Constitution and “what it meant to those who drafted it.”

GOP Sen. John Cornyn, earlier in the proceedings, came at the feeling conservatives have about the Supreme Court going beyond what the Constitution dictates from a different direction, in a series of questions about the Supreme Court’s 2015 same-sex marriage ruling. He expressed skepticism of the basis of that a ruling, a legal concept of “substantive due process,” which the court derived from other parts of the Constitution that call for “due process” protections.

“The Constitution doesn’t mention anything about substance when it talks about due process, the 14th Amendment and the Fifth Amendment don’t talk about substantive due process; it talks about due process of law,” Cornyn maintained.

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing has resumed after taking a lunch break.

The following senators are expected to question Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson next in this order:

More on today’s hearing: Senators may ask questions of the nominee for 30 minutes each, according to the schedule outlined by the committee. The questioning is expected to stretch late into the evening. On Wednesday, lawmakers will be allowed 20 minutes each for a second round of questioning.

CNN’s Clare Foran contributed reporting to this post. 

It’s the second day of confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson. If confirmed, Jackson will become the first Black woman to serve on the US Supreme Court.

Jackson defended her judicial record Tuesday as she faced intense questioning from Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Here are photos from the hearing:

Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson testifies on the second day of her confirmation hearings on Tuesday, March 22.

US Sen. Dick Durbin, center, questions Jackson on Tuesday. Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Jackson is seen on a video screen in the hearing room Tuesday.

Jackson's husband, Patrick, takes notes during Tuesday's testimony. He is wearing socks with Ben Franklin on them.

People wait in line for a chance to sit in during the hearings on Tuesday.

View more images from Jackson’s hearing here.

There is one group of people who aren’t fans of modern-day Supreme Court confirmation hearings: The justices themselves.

Most recently, at an event in February, at New York University School of Law, Justice Sonia Sotomayor worried that the current intensely partisan atmosphere of hearings will impact the reputation of the Court.

She noted that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who served as a lawyer to the ACLU, was confirmed 96-3 and Justice Stephen Breyer, who worked at one point for the liberal lion Sen. Ted Kennedy, was confirmed 87-9. But that has changed in recent years, and the hearings themselves have become partisan fests justices feel are simply to be endured.

“Is it going to affect directly the court’s functioning?” she asked. “It could.” 

During an event at Notre Dame in 2021, Justice Clarence Thomas — who was confirmed only after contentious hearings when Anita Hill made sexual harassment claims against him which he denied — said he thinks the hearings have changed because judges are failing to respect their boundaries on the court.

“I think a lot of the pressure on the nomination and the selection process is because of that,” he said. “I think the court was thought to be the least dangerous branch and we may have become the most dangerous; and I think that is problematic and hence the craziness during my confirmation was one of the results of that. It was absolutely about abortion — a matter I had not thought deeply about at the time.”

Before she died, Ginsburg would often lament the current state of play. In 2017 at the Rathbun Lecture on a Meaningful Life, she said that a senator who had supported her back in 1993 “today wouldn’t touch me with a 10-foot pole”.

“I wish there were a way I could wave a magic wand and put it back when people were respectful of each other and the Congress was working for the good of the country and not just along party lines,” Ginsburg said.

GOP Sen. John Cornyn devoted several questions to the topic of the 2015 Supreme Court decision making same-sex marriage legal nationwide, with Cornyn arguing that the legal principle that provided the foundation of the ruling gives “judges carte blanche to do whatever they want.”

The comment came after he asked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson several questions about substantive due process, the basis of the 2015 ruling known as Obergefell v. Hodges. The Texas Republican asked her how this concept was not “finding a new fundamental right” and a product of “court-made law.”

“It’s a mode of analysis by the court that allows the court to substitute its opinion for the elected representatives of the people, would you agree?” Cornyn said.

His focus on the question suggested that Republicans – who for years had seemed to have moved on from the 5-4 ruling – were interested in relitigating the opinion, which was authored by former Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Cornyn made several skeptical comments about the ruling, calling it a “dramatic pronouncement” that would “inevitably set in conflict between those who ascribe to the Supreme Court’s edict and those who have a firmly held religious belief that marriage is between a man and a woman.”

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham’s line of questioning suggested Democrats had asked now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett tough questions because of her religion and because she “went to church too much.” Graham similarly suggested that now-retired US appellate court Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who like Jackson is African American, stalled in the Senate because of her racial and family background.

There is a broader context to consider in both cases. As a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, Barrett had publicly expressed her deep Catholic faith and her opposition to reproductive rights. Senators who asked questions about Barrett’s personal and religious beliefs, sometimes awkwardly, said they were trying to determine whether those beliefs would affect her decisions, on such privacy issues as abortion. Barrett before becoming a judge had signed statements referring to Roe v. Wade’s “barbaric legacy” and calling for “the unborn to be protected in law.”

The Supreme Court is currently deciding whether to reverse Roe, and Barrett’s vote could be crucial to whether the 1973 landmark that made abortion legal nationwide is upheld or overturned.

Brown, whom Graham noted was a child of sharecroppers, indeed had a poignant personal story. The Democrats who blocked her nomination from 2003 into 2005, however, were focused on her conservative record from the California Supreme Court, particularly on civil rights issues. Democrats delayed consideration and a vote on Brown, nominated by then-President George W. Bush to the DC Circuit court on which Jackson now sits. That court has long been a stepping stone to the Supreme Court, and that raised the stakes as Democrats opposed Brown.

She was ultimately confirmed in 2005 but overlooked for two Supreme Court vacancies that came up that year.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, the only Republican member of the committee who voted for Ketanji Brown Jackson for the DC Circuit last year, told CNN it’s “fair to say” he sees red flags with her nomination in an interview after his first round of grilling the nominee.

He criticized her explanation of defending Guantanamo detainees as an attorney, which was the subject of a tense line of questions for Jackson.

“It just doesn’t make sense to me,” he told CNN.

Graham was one of three Republicans who voted to confirm Jackson for the DC Circuit on the Senate floor last year, and the only Republican on the committee who had supported her in that 2021 vote. But he has indicated he views the Supreme Court fight as a different matter.

“I don’t understand how can she now disassociated herself from the argument she made,” Graham told CNN, referring to a friend-of-the-court briefs Jackson issued, while in private practice, on behalf several organizations in support of the detainees.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Graham told Jackson that the arguments made in the briefs put America in an “untenable position” and that she would have been “run out of town” if she tried to do this during World War II. Before questioning her about the briefs, he ran down examples of former Guantanamo Bay detainees who had joined the Taliban since their release.

Rebuking Graham, Jackson said that signing on to the brief did not make those arguments her arguments, as she called back to comments that Chief Justice John Roberts had made about lawyers’ representation of clients. “When you are an attorney, and you have clients who come to you – whether they or not – you represent their positions before the court,” Jackson said, an answer that did not apparently satisfy Graham.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said that the two Supreme Court decisions that secured the right to abortion for women in America are “settled law” of the court.

Jackson went on to say that the two cases “established a framework that the court has reaffirmed and in order to revisit, as Justice Barrett said, the Supreme Court looks at various factors because stare decisis is a very important principle.” 

She said that the concept of stare decisis “provides and establishes predictability, stability, it also serves as a restraint in this way on the exercise of judicial authority because the court looks at whether or not precedents are relied upon, whether they’re workable, in addition to whether or not they’re wrong.”

However, it makes no difference what a nominee — liberal or conservative — says about the fact that Roe v. Wade is settled precedent. That’s because a Supreme Court justice, unlike a lower court judge, can vote to overturn precedent.

The court is expected to issue a major ruling this summer that could overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in a case involving a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham began his questioning of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson by asking her what religious faith she subscribes to. She responded that she is a nondenominational protestant.

Judge Jackson told Graham that while her faith is very important to her, “as you know, there’s no religious test in the Constitution under Article VI.” 

“And it’s very important to set aside one’s personal views about things in the role of a judge,” she said.

Graham continued, asking the judge “how faithful would you say you are?” She said that she was “reluctant” to talk about her faith because she believed it is important that when evaluating her qualifications the public can “separate out my personal views.”

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Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked by Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, about accusations that she is “soft on crime or even anti law enforcement” because she worked as a public defender during her career.

Jackson noted in her response that she has multiple family members who have worked as police officers. She said that her brother worked as a police officer in Baltimore, and has two uncles who had careers in law enforcement — one who became the Chief of Police of the City of Miami Police Department in the 1990s.

She said that crime, its effects on the community, and the need for law enforcement “are not abstract concepts or political slogans to me.”

Jackson went on to say that as a lawyer and as a citizen, “I care deeply about our Constitution and the rights that make us free.” 

“As you say, criminal defense lawyers perform a service and our system is exemplary throughout the world precisely because we ensure that people who are accused of crimes are treated fairly,” she said to Leahy and the committee.

She said that it’s important to her that people are “held accountable for committing crimes, but we have to do so fairly, under our Constitution.” 

Read more about her record on crime here:

US Supreme Court nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, meets with Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) in Capito's office in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on March 15, 2022.

Related article How Ketanji Brown Jackson is preparing for questions about her record on crime

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said that the guidance that Congress has given courts for sentencing certain child porn offenders “appears to be not consistent with how these crimes are committed,” and therefore creating “extreme disparity” in the sentences that are being handed down.

Her comments marked the first time she weighed in on why judges are often deviating from the statutory sentencing guidelines in these cases. Jackson said that the current guidelines – which are created by statute but, under Supreme Court precedent, are not binding on judges – are now “leading to extreme disparities in the system.”

“It is not doing the work of differentiating who is the more serious offender in the way that it used to,” Jackson said. Courts “are adjusting their sentences in order to account for the changed circumstances, but it says nothing about the courts’ view of the seriousness of this offense.”

Ahead of her hearings, several former judges, lawyers and other legal experts have defended Jackson’s record on these cases. Republicans have also zeroed in on the work she did as a vice chair of the US Sentencing Commission, when it issued a 2012 report calling on Congress to revise the guidelines to realign the sentences based on the type of child porn offense and to lower the mandatory minimums of two categories of offenses. Those recommendations were issued unanimously by the commission, which included GOP appointees.

The courts’ “ultimate charge” from Congress “is to sentence in a way that is sufficient but not greater than necessary to promote the purposes of punishment,” Jackson said Tuesday.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson defended her advocacy for Guantanamo Bay detainees, a part of her record that Republicans have expressed skepticism over and are likely to question her about.

Jackson said there were lawyers who after 9/11 “recognized we couldn’t let the terrorists win by changing who we were fundamentally” and that meant that those accused by the US government of having engaged in the September 11 attacks, under the Constitution, were entitled to representation and fair treatment.

“That’s what makes our system the best in the world. That’s what makes us exemplary,” she added.

As an assistant federal public defender, Jackson represented a Guantanamo Bay detainee, Khi Ali Gul. She also for advocated for detainees in amici briefs in cases before the Supreme Court when she worked at the firm Morrison & Foerster.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, left, arrives with her husband Patrick on Tuesday.

Sen. Chuck Grassley brought up during his questioning of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson that while speaking at an event at the University of Chicago law school in 2020, she quoted Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, telling the audience how King said it was his hope that “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners would be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”

Grassley noted that Jackson went on to talk about how quickly things in the country then changed, “including the civil rights laws over the next few years because of civil rights movement,” adding that Jackson said in this speech at the University of Chicago, “less than a decade after Dr. King’s words, that was the world that you inhabited.”

Grassley went on to ask Jackson if these quotes still reflect her views on this “very important topic” of civil rights today. She said yes.

She said that when she was born in 1970 and went to school in Miami, Florida, the city was “completely different.” 

Jackson continued: “I went to a diverse public junior high school, high school, elementary school. And the fact that we had come that far was, to me, a testament to the hope and the promise of this country, the greatness of America, that we could go from racially segregated schools in Florida to have me sitting here as the first Floridian ever to be nominated to the Supreme Court So yes, senator, that is my belief.” 

Sen. Josh Hawley listens during opening statements on March 21.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked about accusations by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri that her record as a judge shows that she has handed down lenient sentences to convicted child pornography defendants during her career. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois asked Jackson to tell the committee “what was going through your mind” when deciding sentencing during these types of cases.

Jackson began her response by telling the committee that “as a mother, and a judge who has had to deal with these cases, I was thinking that nothing could be further from the truth” in regards to Hawley’s accusations.

Jackson told the committee that Congress has decided what it is that a judge has to do in these and any other cases when they sentence. “And that statute, that statute doesn’t say look only at the guidelines and stop, the statute doesn’t say impose the highest possible penalty for this sickening and egregious crime,” Jackson said. “The statute says calculate the guidelines, but also look at various aspects of this offense and impose a sentence that is, doesn’t say impose the highest possible penalty for this sickening and egregious crime.” 

Jackson said that in every child pornography case “it is important to me to make sure that the children’s perspective, the children’s voices are represented in my sentencing.” 

“And what that means is that for every defendant who comes before me, and who suggests as they often do that they’re just a looker, that these crimes don’t really matter, they collected these things on the internet and it’s fine, I tell them about the victim’s statements that have come in to me as a judge,” she said. 

Judge Jackson said in the past victims have told her “that they will never have a normal adult relationship” and they have gone into prostitution, started using drugs, or developed agoraphobia and been unable to leave the house.

Jackson noted that in each of these cases where the defendants were found guilty she has imposed a significant sentence “and all of the additional restraints that are available in the law.” 

“These people are looking at 20, 30, 40 years of supervision. They can’t use their computers in a normal way for decades. I am imposing all of those constraints because I understand how significant, how damaging, how horrible this crime is,” she said.

Some more context: Durbin noted during his remarks that the cases Hawley referred to yesterday during his statement “all resulted in incarceration of some magnitude.” 

Durbin said the notion that Judge Jackson looks at child pornography cases “casually or with leniency” is belied by her record.

Last week, Hawley launched a Twitter thread charging that Jackson’s record reveals a “pattern” of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes, both as a judge and as a policymaker. “This goes beyond ‘soft on crime,’” he charged.

The White House blasted Hawley for the attacks. A White House spokesman called the tweets “toxic and weakly-presented misinformation that relies on taking cherry-picked elements of her record out of context – and it buckles under the lightest scrutiny.”

Durbin said Sunday that Hawley was “wrong” and “unfair” in his analysis.

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A cyclist rides past the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on March 21.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, just as Judge Amy Coney Barrett did during her confirmation hearing in 2020, declined to comment on the idea of court packing, or adding justices to the Supreme Court beyond the current nine.

Some context: Some Democrats have called for adding justices to the high court to counteract the current 6-3 conservative-liberal dominance, an idea that President Joe Biden has not embraced.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on Tuesday outlined what she described as her “methodology” for approaching cases.

Her comments came in response to a question from Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin of Illinois, who asked her to elaborate on her judicial philosophy, as Republicans have claimed she has not yet been specific enough on that point. She said that the methodology she uses ensures that she is impartial and that she is “adhering to the limits” of her “judicial authority.”

“I am acutely aware that as a judge in our system I have limited power and I am trying in every case to stay in my lane,” she said.

Describing a three-step process, Jackson said step one is ensuring that she was “proceeding from a position of neutrality,” adding that she clears her mind about about any “preconceived notion” for how the case should come out. Step two is taking all the “appropriate inputs” for the case — the arguments, written briefs, hearings, friend-of-the-court arguments, as well as the factual record. The final step is the interpretation of the law to the facts of the case. “This is when I am observing the constraints” on her judicial authority, she said.

In doing so, she she said she is trying “to figure out what the words mean as they were intended by the people who wrote them,” while taking into precedent into account.

She will likely have to address this question multiple times Tuesday.

Day two of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has begun today.

Jackson, who currently sits on DC’s federal appellate court, faces questions from lawmakers. She is expected to be grilled by GOP senators about her legal record, including on crime.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will soon begin questioning President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson today.

She is expected to be grilled by GOP senators on the committee. There is still grousing by Republicans that Biden promised to pick a Black woman.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was frustrated that Democrats have opposed Black and Latino conservatives — specifically, he mentioned Miguel Estrada, who withdrew his nomination for a lower court in 2003, and Janice Rogers Brown, who was only confirmed to a lower court after a long delay.

“So if you’re a Hispanic or African American conservative, it’s about your philosophy. Now, it’s going to be about the historic nature of the pick,” Graham said.

Graham and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa both said they will pursue questions about how and why Jackson was picked and whether liberal groups had too much say. Graham was frustrated that a Black woman from South Carolina, Michelle Childs, was opposed by liberal groups. Grassley used the term “dark money” to suggest a nefarious influence campaign.

(Sidebar: The amount of money and lobbying to influence these picks — both Republican and Democratic — is remarkable, for sure.)

Brown will take questions on any number of judicial issues and hot button topics, ranging from the law of armed conflict to the current GOP buzzword “parental rights,” and whether transgender women should be allowed to compete on women’s sports teams.

She’ll try to be as non-controversial as possible when answering them — she’s told senators she doesn’t have a specific judicial philosophy.

Jackson promised to be independent and transparent, but some Republicans suggested she’ll need to reveal more.

“I can only wonder: What’s your hidden agenda?” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the Tennessee Republican, in an opening statement that sought to raise doubts about Jackson’s record as a judge.

“Is it to let violent criminals, cop killers and child predators back to the streets? Is it to restrict parental rights and expand government’s reach into our schools and our private family decisions? Is it to support the radical left’s attempt to pack the Supreme Court?” Blackburn asked.

While they are promising a respectful inquiry, Republicans will not keep things entirely out of the gutter.

Both Blackburn and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri have questioned Jackson’s role in child pornography cases, when she handed down sentences shorter than those suggested by either the US Sentencing Commission or prosecutors.

That sounds very bad — you hear how Republicans will use it in Blackburn’s quote above – but multiple fact checks, including this one by CNN, have noted the record is a bit more complicated.

One former Republican prosecutor said there is ample reason to oppose Jackson’s nomination, but to allege she is soft on child predators is not one of them.

“The allegation appears meritless to the point of demagoguery,” writes Andrew C. McCarthy for the National Review.

The votes Jackson needs to be confirmed: In the 50-50 Senate, Vice President Kamala Harris could break a tie and place Jackson on the bench. No Democrats have said they oppose her, and it would take a serious fumble at these hearings to endanger her nomination. It is also possible a number of Republicans will support her, but likely not enough to give her the 87 votes outgoing Justice Stephen Breyer received.

Read more here.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson delivers her opening remarks on Monday.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings kicked off Monday with more than four hours of speeches from senators, introductions of Jackson by two of her colleagues and remarks from the nominee herself. 

Jackson’s opening statement touched on her humble background and the gratitude she felt toward those who have boosted her legal ascent. She and her supporters emphasized the “independent” approach she brings to the bench, while Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats argued her confirmation will make the high court more reflective of the country it serves. 

While they had previewed the parts of Jackson’s record they intend to scrutinize, Republicans launched a series of broadsides against Democrats for how they’ve handled the confirmations of GOP nominees. 

Here are takeaways from day one:

Jackson leans into gratitude and humility 

Much of Jackson’s opening remarks were weighted toward her upbringing, and the gratitude she felt toward her parents as well as her faith. 

As she affirmed her “thanks to God,” she said, “First of my many blessings is the fact that I was born in this great Nation” in 1970, in the decade after Congress passed two major civil rights bills. 

Her name, “Ketanji Onyika,” means “lovely one,” she told the committee — an expression of her parents’ “pride in their heritage and hope for the future.” 

She recounted the interest in law she developed from watching her father study law, while praising the “excellent mentors” she had in high school and in the judges that she clerked for. 

“Justice (Stephen) Breyer not only gave me the greatest job that any young lawyer could ever hope to have, but he also exemplifies what it means to be a Supreme Court justice of the highest level of skill and integrity, civility, and grace,” she said, referring to the justice she both clerked for and would replace if confirmed.

“It is extremely humbling to be considered for Justice Breyer’s seat, and I know that I could never fill his shoes,” she added. “But if confirmed, I would hope to carry on his spirit.” 

Jackson vows “independent” approach to law, which supporters echoed

Jackson said she took “very seriously” her responsibility to defend the Constitution and her “duty to be independent.” 

“I decide cases from a neutral posture,” she said. “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.” 

That description of her approach comes as Republicans have criticized her refusal to align herself with a specific judicial philosophy, like originalism or pragmatism. 

On Monday, a prominent conservative judge vouched for how she approached her role as a jurist. 

“Judge Jackson is an independent jurist who adjudicates based on the facts and the law and not as a partisan,” said retired Judge Thomas Griffith, a Republican appointee who served on the US Court of Appeals of the DC Circuit. “Time and again, she has demonstrated that impartiality on the bench.”  

Democrats seek to make her hearing about the public’s faith in the court

Democrats repeatedly reminded their public audience of the high stakes of these confirmation fights, referencing the major cases before a Supreme Court that is dominated by conservatives as they sought to connect the historic nature of Jackson’s nomination to the public’s faith in the court. 

As is common in these hearings, Democratic senators touched on legal issues that resonate with their base — with allusions to Supreme Court cases dealing with health care, abortion rights, gun control and the environment.  

“The American people, our constituents … and their faith in the courts, that’s central to our democracy,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat. “They lose their faith, then democracy loses. The decisions made in our courts — and ultimately in the Supreme Court — affect the daily lives of each one of us.” 

Because Jackson, if confirmed, will replace a fellow liberal, her appointment on its own likely won’t change the 6-3 conservative-to-liberal vote count on those various issues. But Democrats stressed other ways that Jackson — through the demographic and professional diversity she’d bring — will give the court new perspectives and enrich the confidence that Americans place in it. 

Republicans harp on the treatment Kavanaugh received from Democrats

It was more than three years ago that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed after a tumultuous and high-octane set of hearings that tested the Judiciary Committee’s relationships. But despite time, their victory and subsequent confirmation of another conservative justice, Republicans made clear Monday they can’t see Jackson’s nomination without the context of Kavanaugh’s.

Despite the fact that Republicans have pledged to seize on her past writings, rulings and sentences, nearly every Republican member of the panel pledged to draw a line.

“No Republican senator is going to unleash on you an attack about your character when the hearing is virtually over,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said in his opening statement, alluding to how it was late in the process when allegations against Kavanaugh were revealed.  

Read more about key moments from Jackson’s first day of Supreme Court confirmation hearings here.

The 22 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will have the opportunity Tuesday and Wednesday to question President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for two days of hearings.

See who is a part of the committee and where they sit in the graphic below:

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has already appeared before the Senate three times in confirmation proceedings for prior roles. But several days of hearings for her Supreme Court nomination this week will be the highest-profile — and likely most contentious — grilling that Jackson has faced from lawmakers.

Democrats have signaled they will highlight the historic nature of her nomination — if confirmed, she’ll be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court — and her qualifications, which lawmakers of both parties have described as impressive.

But Senate Republicans say they still have questions about Jackson’s record, even as they’ve said they’ll keep proceedings substantive and dignified.

Jackson, a Harvard Law graduate who grew up in Miami, has served less than a year in her current role on the DC US Circuit Court of Appeals. Before that, she was a judge on DC’s federal trial court for eight years. She also vice-chaired the US Sentencing Commission between 2010 and 2014. All three roles required her to sit for Senate confirmation testimony — in hearings that featured a more low-key tone than what is expected this week.

The two days of Jackson questioning will begin Tuesday, after a round of proceedings Monday featuring opening statements and her introduction.

Here is what might come up at her hearing:

“Soft on crime” framing: Senate Judiciary Republicans have grilled lower court nominees on criminal justice policies that they describe as soft on crime. And in floor remarks on Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell previewed that focus on Jackson. His speech critiqued the praise she has received from supporters for how her experience as a public defender gives her “empathy” as a judge.

“Even amidst the national crime wave, a disproportionate share of the new judges President (Joe) Biden has nominated share this professional background that liberals say gives special empathy for criminal defendants,” the Kentucky Republican said. He added that Biden “is deliberately working to make the whole federal judiciary soft on crime.”

Jackson may point to her personal background to counter this attack, as she has done before. With an uncle who was prosecuted for a drug offense, and several members of her family — including her brother — who served in law enforcement, Jackson has relationships that she says have helped her see both sides of the issue.

Scrutiny of her approach to child porn offenses: An extension of the “soft on crime” attack is the claim, somewhat misleadingly made by GOP Sen. Josh Hawley last week, that Jackson is soft on child pornography crimes.

Work on the US Sentencing Commission: In addition to the commission work on child sex crimes, other aspects of Jackson’s tenure there could come up. Before serving as vice chair, she served a two-year stint as an assistant special counsel for the commission in the mid-2000s.

Republicans are poring over thousands of documents for more information on the stances she took while working for the commission.

Support from groups that push Supreme Court expansion: At her 2021 hearing, several Republicans asked her about the support her nomination had received from the left-wing group Demand Justice and other progressive organizations that have advocated for expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court. Jackson declined to weigh in on the idea.

Her refusal to answer the question in her recent meeting with McConnell, according to his account of their discussion, has prompted criticism from the Kentucky Republican.

Expect Democrats to note that Trump nominee and now Justice Amy Coney Barrett also dodged the court expansion question when she was testifying in her Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

Read about more about questions she may face here.