Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed Thursday by a 53-47 vote in the Senate
In a period of stark partisan divides – when presidents rarely invite members of the opposite party to meet in the White House – Washington took notice this winter when President Joe Biden conferred with Senator Charles Grassley, the leading Republican on the Judiciary Committee, before he decided to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to fill a looming vacancy on the Supreme Court.
“This was, for Republicans, a partisan call rather than an ability call,” said Bev-Freda Jackson, who teaches courses in race, justice and public policy at the American University School of Public Affairs. “She is not an outlier, and she is replacing a justice appointed by a Democrat, so there isn’t even the explanation that she was ideologically unsuited. She was nominated by a Democratic president and that was enough.
The Jackson vote may not have been a departure from form, but it reflected a major departure from history. Mr. Grassley, who was a member of the Judiciary Committee at the time, voted for Judge Ginsburg, who had a profile farther to the left than Judge Jackson. So did Orrin Hatch, the conservative from Utah who was the top Republican on the panel at the time. Mr. Hatch, now retired, often said he was proud of his vote for Judge Ginsburg.
“He’s a cagey politician,” said Barbara Trish, a political scientist at Iowa’s Grinnell College. “He’s very good at giving a nod to bipartisanship and integrity in the process and then making a decision that might seem at odds with that.”
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