Jackson pushes back on Republican criticism, maintains judicial neutrality in US Supreme Court confirmation

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - Ketanji Brown Jackson, US President Joe Biden's pick to the Supreme Court, maintained Tuesday her record of judicial neutrality amid criticism from Republicans as she faces Senate confirmation.

Jackson said she is "acutely aware" that the power she wields as a US judge is "limited," maintaining that it is her long-standing conviction to try cases from a "position of neutrality.'

"I am trying, in every case, to stay in my lane," Jackson said on her second day of confirmation hearings.

Under questioning from Senator Chuck Grassley, the Judiciary Committee's top Republican, Jackson said her record "clearly demonstrates that I am an independent jurist," who is "impartial."

"I don't think that anyone can look at my record and say that it is pointing in one direction or another; that it is supporting one viewpoint or another," she said. "I am doing the work, and have done the work for the past 10 years, that judges do to rule impartially and to stay within the boundaries of our proper judicial role."

She also pushed back on criticism from some Republicans that she has been soft on child pornographers, saying, "as a mother and a judge who has had to deal with these cases, I was thinking that nothing could be further from the truth."

Biden nominated Jackson in February following Justice Stephen Breyer's announcement that he would retire from the top court at the end of its current term. If confirmed, Jackson would be the first Black female Supreme Court justice.

Jackson is a graduate of Harvard and its law school, and served as a public defender before serving on the US District Court for the District of Columbia from 2013 to 2021.

Biden nominated her to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2021 and she received Senate confirmation to sit on that court the same year.