Republicans and Senate Democratic leaders agree that Jackson is a good candidate. Jackson, 51, is a member of the DC federal appeals court and has been considered the first candidate for the vacancy since Judge Stephen Breyer announced his resignation. Jackson previously worked as a clerk for Breyer, a federal public defender, a private practice lawyer, a federal district court judge, and a member of the U.S. Conviction Committee. “Clarity and impartiality, this is Judge Jackson,” Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Darbin, chairman of the Justice Committee, said last week. “She sets aside her personal views, evaluates the facts, listens to the arguments, then interprets and applies the law, keeping in mind the limits of the judiciary.” “She is the best and she deserves our support,” he added. But the vast majority of Republicans in the Senate will oppose Jackson. So far, Maine Sen. Susan Collins is the only Republican who has said she would support Jackson. South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, who backed Jackson for her current job a year ago, said last week she would oppose her, citing her conviction for child pornography and representation of Guantanamo detainees. Graham, a member of the jury, said that while Jackson was “extremely good-natured”, she was very lenient in condemning the cases and had “activist zeal” in calling on former President George W. Bush and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. criminals to lawyers as he supported an inmate. “My decision is based on her history of judicial activism, the wrong conviction methodology for child pornography cases, and the belief that Judge Jackson will not be discouraged by the clear meaning of the law when it comes to liberal reasons,” Graham said. An in-depth CNN review of child pornography cases revealed that Jackson had followed largely common sentencing practices. It has become the norm among judges to issue sentences below the guidelines in such cases that do not involve the production of pornography itself. As for defending Guantanamo detainees, Jackson said they had been tortured and subjected to other inhumane treatment, but did not explicitly use the phrase “war criminal.” Jackson’s four detained clients were not convicted and were eventually released from Guantναnamo. Darbin denied Graham on both issues in the Senate last week, calling Jackson “the mainstream of child pornography cases” and saying Republicans also voted for President Donald Trump’s judges, who “do exactly what Trump did. which she does too “. He said it was “a great exaggeration and unfair at first sight” to say that Jackson had called Bush’s officials “war criminals”. It is rare for the Senate Justice Committee to equate to running for the Supreme Court. But the battle for candidates is becoming increasingly controversial, and the current Senate is split 50-50, so there is an equal number of Democrats and Republicans on the panel, instead of the majority party holding more seats. For the past five decades, the commission has found itself at a dead end once – for Clarence Thomas, who has faced charges of sexual harassment. Thirteen Judges – William Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh – passed the committee. In 1987, Democrats who controlled the committee voted to nominate Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan Robert Bork for ideological reasons. And in 2020, Democrats boycotted a committee vote on Amy Connie Barrett, arguing that parliament should not consider President Donald Trump’s life sentence in court while the country was voting in the presidential election. Under Trump, Senate Republicans boosted Conservative power in court from 5-4 to 6-3 after holding down President Barack Obama’s candidate, Merrick Garland, during another election year – 2016 – and then confirmed Gorsos in 2017, and Coney Barrett in 2020 to replace the late Ginsburg. Jackson’s affirmation will likely replace one liberal – Breyer – with another. “I think all indications are that Judge Jackson will be a liberal activist from the bench,” Senate GOP chief Mitch McConnell told Fox last week. “But the good news for people like me is that Court is still 6-3.” “We have made huge changes in the last four years that I think have brought the Court to a very stable position with a large number of judges believing in the graphic idea that maybe a judge should follow the law,” he added. CNN’s Tierney Sneed and Daniel Dale contributed to this report.
