Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's historic confirmation hearings formally came to an end on Thursday, with legal experts, other groups and witnesses offering their testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Jackson faced a grueling two days of questioning from the full Senate Judiciary panel on Tuesday and Wednesday, with topics ranging from her judicial philosophy to attacks on her sentencing for child pornography cases.
On Thursday, witnesses, including friends and other groups, sought to speak to Jackson's qualifications, as well as who she is as a person.
"In the nearly 40 years that I’ve known Ketanji, I can’t remember ever hearing her say an unkind word to anybody, or even an unkind word about anybody," her longtime friend Richard Rosenthal told the panel. "Or even an unkind word about anybody. That's just not her nature, and that's not how her amazing parents, Mr. Brown and Mrs. Brown, raised her."
Jackson this week declared she would rule “without any agendas” as the high court’s first Black female justice, rejecting Republican efforts to paint her as soft on crime in her decade on the federal bench. Democrats defended her and heralded the historic nature of her nomination.
“America is ready for the Supreme Court glass ceiling to shatter,” Sen. Dick Durbin, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday, Jackson’s second and final day answering questions.
Republicans, including Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a 2024 presidential hopeful, Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., focused their attacks on what they alleged was reduced sentences for child pornography cases, while others, like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, pressed her for a recusal in a key case over affirmative action at Harvard University, her alma mater where she currently serves on the Board of Overseers.
Hawley on Wednesday continued to press Jackson on the specific child pornography case U.S. vs. Hawkins, where she sentenced a man to three months as opposed to the two years requested by the prosecution.
Hawley asked her: "Judge, you gave him three months. My question is: Do you regret it or not?"
She answered: "Senator, what I regret is that in the hearing about my qualifications to be a justice on the Supreme Court, we've spent a lot of time focusing on this small subset of my sentences, which I've tried to explain."
Sen. Durbin asked Ann Claire Williams, a retired U.S. Circuit Judge who chairs the American Bar Association panel that recommends federal judges, if the group found any evidence that Jackson is "soft on crime," as Republicans sought to portray her.
"None whatsoever," Williams said, adding that sentencing concerns "never came up in any of these interviews."
Members of the American Bar Association spoke to more than 250 judges and lawyers before the organization issued its highest recommendation, calling Jackson unanimously “well qualified.”
"The question we kept asking ourselves: How does one human being do so much, so extraordinarily well?" Williams said.
“She possesses all of the other important attributes of a great jurist,” ABA member Jean Veta said. “She is practical and intuitive and curious and courteous and always impeccably well-prepared.”
Joseph Drayton, another member of the ABA panel, said Jackson’s reputation is “stellar.”
Durbin said that the criticism from Republicans on Jackson "saddened" him: "Some of the attacks on this judge were unfair, unrelenting and beneath the dignity of the United States Senate."
“My lasting impression is a judge who sat there through it all, head held high with dignity and determination and strength,” Durbin added. “A lesser person might have picked up and told her family, ‘We’re leaving. This is beyond the pale.’ She didn’t. And it says an awful lot to me about her character and why the president was correct in choosing her to be the next Supreme Court justice.”
On Thursday, Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty decried the attacks on Jackson levied by Republicans.
“Sadly but not surprisingly, Judge Jackson has been the subject of unfair attacks," Beatty said. "These bad faith efforts exist despite a resume that arguably surpasses those of previous nominees."
"Judge Jackson’s confirmation will send a message to Black women and little girls like my granddaughter Leah, whose mother is the first Black woman to serve on the 10th District Court of Appeals,” Beatty said. “And Leah’s first known president was a Black man. And now she sees a Black female vice president. So if a guidance counselor tells her, ‘Your goals are too high,’ she will remember how Judge Jackson soared against adversity as one of our nation’s brightest legal minds."
But Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., defended his party's questioning of Jackson, comparing her confirmation process to how Democrats treated now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh: "The last 48 hours were a dry and friendly legal seminar compared to the circus the Democrats inflicted on the country just a few years back."
Later Wednesday, the Kentucky Republican made it official: Jackson would not be getting his vote.
"After studying the nominee’s record and watching her performance this week, I cannot and will not support Judge Jackson for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court," he said.
In one odd exchange Thursday, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, who argued against Jackson's confirmation, refused to say that President Joe Biden is the "duly elected and lawfully serving" president.
"Is Joseph R. Biden of Delaware the duly elected and lawfully serving President of the United States of America?" Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse asked.
"He is the President of this country," Marshall replied.
"Is he the duly elected and lawfully serving President of the United States?" Sen. Whitehouse asked again, to which Marshall replied the same.
"Are you answering that omitting the language duly elected and lawfully serving, purposefully?" Whitehouse pressed.
"I'm answering the question. He is the President of the United States," Marshall replied.
"And you have no view to whether he was duly elected or is lawfully serving," Whitehouse followed up.
"I’m telling you he’s the President of the United States," Marshall said.
The sustained focus on Jackson's record suggested that, contrary to Democratic hopes, Jackson’s confirmation vote in the full Senate is unlikely to garner much, if any, Republican support. Still, several Republicans acknowledged that she is likely to be on the court. Democrats can confirm her without any bipartisan support in the 50-50 Senate as Vice President Kamala Harris can cast the tiebreaking vote.
Republican lawmakers told CNN Thursday that they will not boycott the scheduled Senate Judiciary vote for Jackson, which would Democrats quorum in an attempt to stall her confirmation.
"Zero. Nada. Zip," North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis said. "Never going to happen."
Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking member of the Judiciary panel, also said they would not back a boycott.
Republican criticism of Jackson was punctuated by praise from Democrats throughout the process, including a powerful speech Wednesday from New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, which brought Jackson to tears.
Booker, one of three Black senators currently serving in Congress, described how much Jackson’s nomination means to him, saying in part: “I just look at you and I start getting full of emotion.”
Jackson, too, appeared emotional, wiping away tears at the height of Booker's address.
“You are a person that is so much more than your race and gender. You are a Christian, you are a mom, you are an intellect, you love books,” Booker said. “But for me, I'm sorry, it's hard for me to look at you and not see my mom, not see my cousins [...] I see my ancestors and yours.”
"Any one of us Senators can yell as loud as we want that Venus can't serve, that Beyonce can't sing, that astronaut Mae Jamison didn't go that high," Booker said. "As it says in the bible, 'let the work I've done speak for me'. Well, you have spoken."
“Nobody is going to steal that joy,” he added. “You have earned this spot. You are worthy. You are a great American.”
Another emotional exchange came from Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., who – after listing Jackson’s many accomplishments – said some lines questioning have "been a reminder, and in some ways, a new ‘Exhibit A,’ that for people of color, particularly those who have the audacity to try to be the first, often have to work twice as hard to get half the respect.”
Padilla, who is the son of Mexican immigrants, said he was reminded of his own high school experience last week while discussing Jackson’s nomination with students at a school in San Francisco.
“As I was speaking with the students, I couldn't help but be reminded of my own high school experience,” Padilla began. “When one of my teachers discouraged me from applying to MIT, because they didn't want me to be disappointed. I turned that discouragement into motivation.”
“Judge Jackson, I know that you, too, have been doubted on your way,” he continued. “To the seat that you find yourself in today. Even after the last three days of this hearing, your experience and qualifications have been called into question by some despite your clear, lengthy record of talent, achievement, and accomplishment.”
"On behalf of the young people I visited with last Friday in South San Francisco and for the many others across the country who are watching this confirmation hearing today [...] what do you say to some of them who may doubt that they can one day achieve the same great heights that you have?” Padilla asked.
Jackson, after wiping away tears, responded in part: “Thank you, senator. That was very moving. And I appreciate the opportunity to speak to young people. I appreciate it very much."
The Senate Judiciary committee will meet in executive session on Monday to consider Jackson’s nomination, with a vote set for April 4. Senate Democrats are hoping to vote to confirm Jackson before the Easter recess on April 11.