Judge Jackson’s Confirmation Hearing Has Had Little to Do With Judge Jackson
Thus far, the proceedings have been dominated by grandstanding and distraction.
The relatively sleepy confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s nominee for the Supreme Court, finally produced a fiery exchange yesterday. But this wasn’t a discussion of law between a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the judge—it was a tense dialogue between Democratic Chairman Dick Durbin and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. And the topic was not judicial precedent or legal reasoning, but rather the two parties’ different approaches to the prison at Guantánamo Bay.
Jackson was relegated to bystander. Perhaps by now she’s used to it. For much of the initial two days of the hearings, Jackson’s presence, much less her views or temperament, has seemed almost incidental. The
