Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans on Monday delayed for one week the consideration of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson‘s nomination to the Supreme Court, slightly slowing the pace for President Joe Biden’s pick to be confirmed.
In order to move forward without delays, Jackson needed majority approval in the evenly divided committee of 11 Democrats and 11 Republicans. With that lacking, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, bowed to Senate rules in allowing Republicans a single delay of one week.
“I joined in the request to hold over the nominees for one week,” ranking GOP committee member Sen. Chuck Grassley said Monday. “I’ll have specific things to say about the nomination of Judge Jackson at that meeting, [one] week from today.”
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The committee is now slated to report Jackson’s nomination to the 100-member Senate on April 4, and the Senate will hold a full vote on Jackson’s nomination on or before April 11, when senators are scheduled to begin their spring break.
Monday’s vote follows the conclusion of Jackson’s confirmation hearings on Thursday. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle extensively interviewed Biden’s nominee to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer, who is retiring later this year.
Republican criticism of Jackson centered on questions about her sentencing record that were first raised by Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley on the eve of her committee hearings. Hawley claimed that Jackson ruled leniently in her past sentences for convicted child pornographers in comparison to the recommended guidelines by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
But GOP criticism over her sentencing record was largely disputed by Democrats, who made broader comparisons to conservative-appointed judges who issued similar sentencing terms, and members of the American Bar Association also pushed back on concerns over Jackson’s record when asked by committee members on Thursday.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky also set the tone for Republicans to seek clarification on Jackson’s “judicial philosophy,” which many GOP committee members argued Jackson did not clearly articulate last week, despite her laying out the “three steps” she takes when weighing cases.
In response to McConnell’s remarks last week saying he “will not” support the nominee, Durbin argued Monday that Republicans should “keep in mind” that they have supported “many of President Trump’s nominees who also declined labels when it came to judicial philosophies.”
Jackson’s confirmation remains “on track” for the Democrats’ plans of a vote in early April, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said last week. His comments came after West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin confirmed his intent to vote in favor of Jackson, which would confirm her in a 51-50 vote in the Senate, given the vice president’s tiebreaker vote.
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“After meeting with her, considering her record, and closely monitoring her testimony and questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, I have determined I intend to vote for her nomination to serve on the Supreme Court,” Manchin told reporters last week.
Following her nomination by Biden last month, Jackson received praise from numerous coalitions of law enforcement officials, former judges, and attorneys general who lauded her experience as a former public defender and as a federal judge, including eight years of experience on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and her confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last year.
If confirmed, Jackson would make history as the first black woman to be seated on the nine-member Supreme Court.
