WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court last Thursday, shattering a historic barrier by securing her place as the first Black female justice.
Cheers rang out in the Senate chamber as Jackson, a 51-year-old appeals court judge with nine years experience on the federal bench, was confirmed 53-47, mostly along party lines but with three Republican votes.
Alaska’s two Republican senators split on the issue.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski was one of only three Republicans to vote in favor of confirming Jackson. Other Republicans voting in favor were Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.
Murkowski said in a statement this week that she had decided to support Jackson’s confirmation after multiple conversations with her.
The decision, Murkowski said, rests on her “rejection of the corrosive politicization of the review process for Supreme Court nominees, which, on both sides of the aisle, is growing worse and more detached from reality by the year.”
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan voted against the confirmation. In a statement released after the vote, he said, “I found her views and record to be very concerning” on the issues of judicial philosophy and limits on the “federal judiciary and federal agency powers.”
The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska supported Jackson’s confirmation. President Chalyee Éesh Richard Peterson said that while Jackson doesn’t have the most experience in Indian Country law, she is the most qualified candidate nominated to the Supreme Court in recent years.
Other tribes and tribal organizations across the state sent letters of support to the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, including the Association of Village Council Presidents, which represents 56 tribes in Western Alaska.
Jackson will take her seat when Justice Stephen Breyer retires this summer, solidifying the liberal wing of the 6-3 conservative-dominated court.
During four days of Senate hearings last month, Jackson spoke of her parents’ struggles through racial segregation and said her “path was clearer” than theirs as a Black American after the enactment of civil rights laws. She attended Harvard University, served as a public defender, worked at a private law firm and was appointed as a member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
She told senators she would apply the law “without fear or favor,” and pushed back on Republican attempts to portray her as too lenient on criminals she had sentenced.
Jackson will be just the third Black justice, after Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, and the sixth woman. She will join three other women, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett — meaning that four of the nine justices will be women for the first time in history.
Once sworn in, Jackson will be the second youngest member of the court after Barrett, 50. She will join a court on which no one is yet 75, the first time that has happened in nearly 30 years.
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