Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmed as Supreme Court justice

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first African-American woman to be seated on the U. S. Supreme Court in a 53-47 confirmation vote by the Senate, with Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, and Susan Collins joining their Democratic colleagues. Justice Jackson will replace Justice Stephen Breyer, a moderate, when he retires at the end of the current Court term.

The modestly bipartisan vote ended an unusually caustic and bitter series of hearings, during which Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee attacked Jackson as a partisan and leaned heavily on culture war fights rather than questions concerning her qualifications. Republican Senators accused the judge of being lenient toward child sexual abusers. Fact-checkers say the claims are misleading and that Jackson’s sentencing decisions were in line with her peers on the federal bench. Other Senators, themselves lawyers, accused Jackson of espousing the causes or crimes of the defendants she was assigned to defend as a public defender. Observers were hard-pressed to recall a confirmation hearing for a justice that delved into children’s book selections or sought the nominee’s definition of a “woman.”