Historic Confirmation To US Supreme Court To Be Celebrated

Newly confirmed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will talk about her historic appointment Friday afternoon on the South Lawn of the White House.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are set to accompany her and will also deliver remarks celebrating Jackson’s landmark ascent to the court.

The Senate confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday by a vote of 53-47, making her the first African-American female justice on the highest court in the country.

Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the historic moment, even though Democrats did not need her tie-breaking vote in the evenly divided Senate to confirm Jackson.

Three Republicans — Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney — all voted to approve the 51-year-old judge, only the third African American justice in the Supreme Court’s history.

In a four-day hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, Democrats praised Jackson for her depth of experience, serving as a judge for nearly 10 years at the federal and appellate levels, and clerking for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who U.S. President Joe Biden nominated her to replace.

Jackson is also the first public defender to serve on the Supreme Court. But her background representing defendants and later experiences sentencing child pornographers drew complaints from Senate Republicans who say she is soft on crime.

During the confirmation hearings for Jackson, witnesses from the American Bar Association, a professional association of lawyers and law students that sets standards for law schools, rejected the allegations that she was “soft on crime.”

Jackson’s seating does not alter the court’s 6-3 conservative-dominated balance. But Republicans expressed concern about voting for a justice who they say will be further to the left of Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, who were both nominated by Democratic presidents.

Jackson joins three other female justices on the court — Sotomayor, Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett — marking the first time the court has had four women at the same time.