By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal appellate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s pick to become the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, visited the Senate on Wednesday as lawmakers from both parties mulled her candidacy for the lifetime post.
Jackson, 51, chosen to succeed retiring liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, began the formal task of seeking Senate confirmation during two high-profile meetings with the chamber’s two top lawmakers: Democrat Chuck Schumer and Republican Mitch McConnell.
Schumer met with Jackson for about 40 minutes in an ornate Senate dining room and offered reporters wall-to-wall praise for qualifications and breadth of experience that he said should draw support from Democrats and Republicans alike.
“She deserves support from the other side of the aisle, and I am hopeful that a good number of Republicans will vote for her, given who she is. And when they meet her, they will just be loud, as I was,” the New York Democrat said.
Democrats hope to confirm her before the Easter recess, which formally begins on April 11.
If confirmed, Jackson would join the liberal bloc on an increasingly assertive court that has a 6-3 conservative majority, including three justices appointed by Biden’s Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.
Jackson has served since last year on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit after eight years as a federal district judge in Washington and worked earlier as a Supreme Court clerk for Breyer. She would become the sixth woman to serve on a nine-member court that now has three female justices.
But McConnell, who met with her after Schumer, has raised questions about Jackson by claiming that she is supported by activists who want to add justices to the high court to undermine its conservative majority and by pointing to an appellate record that includes only two opinions so far.
“I am troubled by the combination of this slim appellate record and the intensity of Judge Jackson’s far-left, dark-money fan club,” the Kentucky Republican said in a floor speech on Tuesday.
At Jackson’s confirmation hearing last year, Republicans questioned her on whether race plays a role in her approach to deciding cases. She said it did not.
Democrats hope Jackson’s nomination will be good for Biden and their party, who need Black voters, women and other key members of their political base to turn out for November midterm elections that could change the balance of power in Congress.
Democrats, who control the evenly split 100-seat Senate thanks to Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote, could confirm her with no Republican votes if they remained united.
(Reporting by David Morgan; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
