WASHINGTON: Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s US Supreme Court nominee, on Thursday moved closer to securing Senate confirmation in the next two weeks, while experts from the nation’s leading lawyers’ group dismissed Republican claims that she was “soft on crime” including child pornography.

As the Senate Judiciary Committee held the fourth and final day of Jackson’s confirmation hearing, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said the chamber was “on track” to confirm the federal appellate judge to the lifetime job before its expected break for Easter on April 8.

There is no sign that the Republican attacks mounted this week are likely to derail Jackson’s confirmation, with Biden’s fellow Democrats narrowly controlling the Senate. With a simple majority needed for confirmation and the Senate divided 50-50 between the parties, she would get the job if Democrats remain united regardless of how the Republicans vote.

It is possible she could pick up a small number of Republican votes, most likely Senator Lisa Murkowski and Senator Susan Collins.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell refuses to support the nomination

But Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday he cannot support Jackson’s nomination.

McConnell made the statement on the floor as the Senate’s judiciary committee.

Following liberal Justice Stephen Breyer’s January announcement of his plan to return, Biden nominated Jackson in February to become the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s top judicial body. The committee is likely vote on April 4 on sending her nomination to the full Senate for a final confirmation vote.

Jackson concluded two days of marathon testimony on Wednesday night, facing repeated attacks by several Republicans who accused her of being lenient in her previous role as a federal trial court judge in sentencing child pornography offenders. “Some of the attacks on this judge were unfair, unrelenting and beneath the dignity of the United States Senate,” said Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, the committee’s chairman.

“My lasting impression,” Durbin added, “is of a judge who sat there through it all, head held high, with dignity and determination and strength.” The most hostile questioning came from Republican Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, Marsha Blackburn and Lindsey Graham.

Schumer described the Republican attacks as an attempt by “just a handful” of senators to “smear” Jackson with misleading and false accusations.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday criticised Jackson on the Senate floor, accusing her of deflecting basic questions about her judicial philosophy and declining to answer legitimate questions about her own rulings. McConnell also faulted Jackson after she refused — as current Justice Amy Coney Barrett did in her 2020 confirmation hearing — to weigh in on proposals from the left to expand the number of justices to erase the court’s current 6-3 conservative majority. “This made up an endless circle of evasion,” McConnell said.

Jackson’s confirmation would not change the court’s ideological balance but would let Biden freshen its liberal bloc with a 51-year-old jurist young enough to serve for decades.

The committee heard from outside witnesses testifying about Jackson’s record and qualifications, including members of the American Bar Association.

Published in Dawn, March 25th, 2022