This event has ended.
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday began the first day of confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden's Supreme Court pick.
If confirmed, Jackson would be the first Black woman to serve on the high court.
The day is set to feature opening remarks by the chair and members of the committee, followed by remarks from Jackson.
In first remarks at her own hearing, Jackson vows to defend the Constitution, respect precedent
In a glowing tribute to her loving family and supportive mentors, including Stephen Breyer, the Supreme Court justice she’s been nominated to replace, Jackson used her first remarks during her confirmation hearing to pledge to defend the Constitution.
“Members of this committee, if I am confirmed, I commit to you that I will work productively to support and defend the Constitution and the grand experiment of American democracy that has endured over these past 246 years,” she said.
Jackson said that she would defer to judicial precedence in her rulings.
“I decide cases from a neutral posture. 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,” Jackson said.
“I know that my role as a judge is a limited one, that the Constitution empowers me only to decide cases and controversies that are properly presented,” she continued.
“I know my judicial role is further constrained by careful adherence to precedent,” she said.
Jackson frequently spoke of her love for her country, saying earlier in her remarks that “the first of my many blessings is the fact that I was born in this great nation, a little over 50 years ago.”
Monday's hearing adjourned following her remarks.
Day 1 of hearings concludes
At 3:37 p.m. ET, the first day of Jackson's confirmation hearing concluded. The committee will return at 9 a.m. Tuesday to begin questions.
Jackson sworn in
Jackson was sworn in before she testified.
Lisa Fairfax lauds her friend, Jackson, with praise — 'destined to be a judge'
Lisa Fairfax, a decadeslong friend of Jackson, lauded her roommate from Harvard College and Harvard Law School as a “woman of deep faith in God,” “a friend you’re immediately drawn to,” a “role model” and a “coalition builder.”
Fairfax, a presidential professor and the co-director of the Institute for Law & Economics at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, said Jackson was “destined to be a judge because of her ability to see all sides and render fair and level-headed decisions.”
Jackson’s husband, Patrick Jackson, seated behind his wife in the hearing room, wiped tears from his face as he listened to the loving description of his spouse.
“I know she is honored and humbled by the significance of this moment: not for what it means for her, but what it means for our amazing country,” Fairfax said.
Griffith endorses Brown as 'independent jurist'
Thomas Griffith, a former judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals appointed by President George W. Bush, offered an opening statement endorsing Brown whom he said he first met in 2013 after she was confirmed by the Senate to the federal district court as a trial judge.
Griffith said he respected her "diligent and careful approach" and "collegial manner," which he described as indispensable traits for her success if confirmed as a justice on the high court.
Griffith is an "independent jurist" who adjudicates based on law and not on partisanship, he said, "Her rule is simple, follow the law."
Griffith pushed back on criticism over how a Republican-appointed judge could back a Democratic president's nominee as "dangerous hyper-partisanship."
"There should be nothing unusual about my support for a highly qualified nominee who has demonstrated through her life's work her commitment to the rule of law and an impartial judiciary," he said.
Read Jackson's prepared opening remarks
After listening to each senator on the committee speak, Jackson was the final speaker to give an opening statement. Read her prepared remarks here.
Ossoff invokes Ahmaud Arbery, voting rights in discussing unfulfilled promises of Constitution
Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., spent his opening remarks talking about the gap between the promises made in the Constitution and how laws are enforced and rights are protected in reality, invoking the murder of Ahmaud Arbery and voting rights as examples.
“Our Constitution’s guarantees of individual rights and equal protection under the law remain too often and for too many unfulfilled,” he began. “For any colleagues who doubt this, I remind them of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder in Glynn County, Georgia, just two years ago. When a young Black man was shot dead in cold blood on camera in the street and the local authorities buried the case and looked the other way. Only a massive civil rights mobilization pressured state and eventually federal prosecutors to act.”
“For any colleagues who doubt that those promises remain unfulfilled to too many, I remind them that in my state you can predict how long someone must wait to vote by where they live and the color of their skin,” Ossoff continued.
He then took an unsubtle swipe at Republican textualists who say that Supreme Court judges should only interpret the Constitution according to exactly how it was written more than 200 years ago.
“In practice the promises made in the plaint text of our Constitution are still too often broken … and so the court remains essential to that national process of becoming in real life what America is in text.”
Tillis says no place on the Supreme Court for 'judicial activism'
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he doesn't want an "activist at either end of the spectrum" on the Supreme Court.
"Although, I think some folks are OK with one end of the spectrum, not the other," he said in his opening statement.
"If we are talking about preserving the integrity of the court, there is no place on the Supreme Court for judicial activism," he said. "The best thing we could do here is make sure we have justices that are going to be stewards of the Constitution."
A Harvard Law School alum celebrates her classmate in D.C.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Njeri Mathis Rutledge would normally be celebrating her birthday today but something important came up: the Senate confirmation hearings of her former Harvard Law School classmate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“I flew across country because I had to be here for this historic day,” Rutledge said at the Black Women’s Leadership Collective watch party. She joined the faculty of the South Texas College of Law Houston in 2005 where she teaches in the area of criminal procedure, forensic evidence, and legal research and writing.
Rutledge graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in English from Spelman College and earned her law degree from Harvard Law School in 1996, where she served as technical editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. She said she remembers her classmate fondly. “We lived in the same dorm. She was not only brilliant, but hardworking and down to earth,” Rutledge said.
To wit, Rutledge remembers Jackson preparing a meal for her study group: “It was actually a seafood boil!” she chuckled.
And once before a major exam, Jackson kindly advised her classmate to bring extra pencils because it might take several hours. In such a competitive environment “that showed me she wasn’t just out for self. She’s good people.”
Blackburn suggests Jackson has a 'hidden agenda' on crime, race
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., suggested during her opening remarks that Jackson has a hidden agenda on crime policy and racial issues.
Blackburn said Jackson once wrote every judge has "personal, hidden agendas" that influence how they decide cases.
"I can only wonder what your hidden agenda is," Blackburn continued. "Is it to let child predators back to the streets? Is it to restrict parental rights and expand government into our schools and private family decisions? Is it to support the radical left's attempt to pack the Supreme Court?"
Blackburn also asserted Jackson has supported the 1619 Project, which is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times on the history of slavery, saying "and have made clear that you believe judges must consider critical race theory when deciding criminal defendants. Is it your personal agenda to incorporate critical race area into our legal systems?"
