Ketanji Brown Jackson, Following the conclusion of Jackson’s confirmation hearing, it is largely believed that the Senate would approve her nomination, but by a very small margin. Brown’s hearing was not as intense as some recent ones.
She did, however, field some absurd inquiries: one senator asked her to rank the tenacity of her beliefs, another inquired as to whether or not infants are racist, and yet another asked her to define “woman.”
The inquiries highlighted how current senate confirmation hearings are. They have evolved into arenas for partisan conflict as senators push their political objectives under the pretense of a Supreme Court hearing.
We have taken the liberty of responding to several questions that may have cast doubt on Ketanji Brown’s character.
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Is Ketanji Brown Jackson Good?
Although there have been considerable rumors that Brown may join the liberal side of the Supreme Court, Brown has sworn to remain impartial.
On the first day of her confirmation hearing, Ketanji stated,
“I have been a judge for almost ten years and I take my responsibilities to be independent extremely seriously.
“I make decisions based on a neutral position”
She added,
Jackson, according to several lawmakers, is an “activist judge” who inserts her preferences into court decisions. Ketanji claimed that she is fully aware of her judicial bounds and has a process in place to prevent her from going beyond them. I’m trying to stay in my lane in every situation.
Politicians only voice their dissatisfaction with judicial activism when it clashes with their political philosophies. Although Brown reaffirmed her commitment to objectivity, Democrats secretly hope that she is activist enough to support their agenda.
Ketanji Brown is anticipated to join the Supreme Court’s liberal branch. Her confirmation won’t change the 6-3 conservative balance of the court because she will be replacing a liberal judge.
Ketanji Brown acknowledged that dissenting judgments occasionally serve as the foundation for future law; they may not have an immediate impact on the court’s decision, but they may be crucial in the long run. Brown used Justice Harlan’s Plessy v. Ferguson dissent as an example:
“In a dissent, he expressed his disagreement with the idea of “separate but equal,” which was supported by all other justices. And his dissent served as a model for Justice Marshall’s reasoning in Brown v. Board [of Education of Topeka] years later.
Even though it has a conservative slant, the Supreme Court frequently renders unanimous rulings; over the previous ten years, approximately half of the cases have done so. Jackson won’t always be on the opposing side, so.
Similar to other federal judges, Ketanji has sentenced juvenile offenders.
In his opening remarks, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley listed seven instances that Brown had heard and showed discrepancies between Ketanji’s punishments and the established sentencing guidelines.
The fact that Judge Jackson imposed a light sentence that was lower than what the guidelines suggested worries me, and I’ve been very open about this, Hawley said. Ketanji was alleged “soft on crime,” especially when it came to child sex offenders, according to Hawley.
Ketanji stated,
“I was thinking that nothing could be further from the truth, as a mother and a judge who has had to deal with these issues. She voiced her disgust for sex offenders and noted that the sentencing standards established by Congress did not account for the changing nature of the crimes when determining her penalties.
According to Jackson, “there is an extreme disparity” in sentences given for similar crimes because of the way the law is currently written and how Congress has instructed the sentencing commission.
Ketanji pushed for the abolition of mandatory minimum penalties for child porn while serving on the United States Sentencing Commission, according to Senator Hawley. In actuality, the bipartisan commission advised Congress that the current regulations were unjustifiably harsh in certain cases and excessively liberal in others.
Judge William H. Pryor, who served on the committee with Brown, said to The New York Times, “We worked by consensus, and that is the tradition of the sentencing commission. “Almost all of our votes were data-driven and unanimous.”
“As for the other Commissioners who backed this terrible recommendation, they certainly shouldn’t be on the Supreme Court either,” Hawley said in response to a Washington Post fact-check on the subject.
Marsha Blackburn, a senator, emphasized Jackson’s propensity for sentencing below federal guidelines. However, as law professor Douglas A. Berman of Ohio State University noted on his blog, this is not unusual among federal judges.
Federal sentencing standards for child sexual images, which are “widely regarded as dysfunctional and unnecessarily punitive,” are rarely followed by federal courts, according to Berman.
It appears to be rather mainstream, he continued,
“if and when we correctly contextualize Judge Jackson’s sentencing record in federal child porn cases.”
Ketanji Brown declined to represent captives from Guantanamo Bay.
Ketanji Brown will be the first formerly employed public defender to hold a position on the US Supreme Court if confirmed. Being a public defender is a part of the legal industry, hence Ketanji’s performance as a judge is unaffected by this.
She did, however, happen to represent Guantanamo Bay detainees when she was a public defender. Some legislators expressed worry over Brown’s alleged use of “free legal services to assist terrorists in escaping” the facility.
Texas senator John Cornyn questioned Jackson’s decision to label former president George W. Bush and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld as “war criminals.”
“Why would you act in such a way? John said, “It seems so out of character.
Jackson used an avoidance technique made prominent by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and brilliantly exploited by Justice Amy Coney Barrett at her confirmation hearing when she stated that she needed to read the paper before remarking.
According to Paul M. Collins Jr., a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts, Justice Jackson “had relatively few strong stances on anything remotely controversial.” She appeared to have paid close attention to how Justice Barrett conducted the committee since she frequently cited Barrett’s comments to sidestep the senators’ inquiries.
Public defenders are not allowed to pick the clients they represent, Ketanji Brown emphasized.
Federal public defenders are not allowed to choose who they represent, she said. Brown referred to legal representation as a “fundamental constitutional value,” even for the most terrible of criminals.
According to Brown, she never met the four guys she was tasked with standing up for. The men were cleared of all accusations, and they were never put on trial.
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