In Battles With GOP Senators, Jackson Sees Similar Hurdles as Previous Minorities
Research shows that female candidates often face more interruptions, as do candidates of color.
The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.
Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/BloombergSupreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black female candidate to be considered for the job, faced a barrage of questions during her Senate confirmation hearing about critical race theory and whether it would influence her work as a justice. She’s also faced repeated interruptions.
One explosive back-and-forth came Wednesday as Republican Senator Lindsey Graham used his time to air complaints about the treatment of past GOP judicial nominees and accused Jackson of being lenient in sentencing defendants in child pornography cases. Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin asked the South Carolina senator to let Jackson finish her answer multiple times.
Another thorny exchange came Tuesday from Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who asked the judge about her views on the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, a series of articles looking at the history of the U.S. through the prism of slavery. Cruz, who was a year ahead of Jackson at Harvard Law School, also questioned her contention that she didn’t know whether critical race theory is part of the curriculum in U.S. schools. Jackson rebuffed the questions, replying: “It doesn’t come up in my work as a judge.”
The exchanges are part of a long history of such incidents. Analysis shows that female nominees often face a spike in questions related to judicial philosophy — or measures sometimes used to determine “competence to serve,” researchers have said.