The Skeptical Idealist: Ketanji Brown Jackson

There is only one word that accurately describes what Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have been doing to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings this week. They have been neither interviewing her, nor questioning her, nor even interrogating her. They have been harassing her.

Jackson may be more qualified than any of the justices who currently sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. She graduated from Harvard Law School and has served as a law clerk in U.S. District Court, worked in private practice, worked as a federal public defender, and served as an appellate court judge. She also was vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission. She actually has more experience than any current Supreme Court justice, and more trial experience than four of the current justices combined.

But pesky Republicans such as Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham have insisted on questioning her about irrelevant culture war issues to pander to their conservative constituents before the midterm congressional elections. They have turned the hearings into a political circus with their grandstanding. Ted Cruz refused to shut up when Chairman Dick Durbin told him that his time had expired. Sen. Marsha Blackburn pressed Jackson to define what a woman is, an answer which would have prejudiced her on any transgenderism cases that might come before the court. And Lindsay Graham threw a tantrum and walked out. The hearings turned into political theater. In fact, if they had been theater, they would have been vaudeville.

Yet thoughout the four days of hours-long hearings, Jackson remained calm and gracious. Certainly more gracious than the conservatives foaming at the mouth to bring her down. When she has visibly reacted to questioning, it has been to show emotion when discussing her patriotism, or on rare occasions to release a long-suffering sigh in reaction to an inane question from a Republican making an ass of himself.

Ketanji Brown Jackson has shown more class than all of her questioners put together. She clearly deserves appointment to the Supreme Court, and if she is not confirmed it will be a blatant travesty of political racism.