The most ridiculous questions asked of Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearings

‘Do you think we should catch and imprison more or fewer murderers?’

(Getty Images)

Nine months ago, 44 Republican senators voted against then-US District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals.

One of them — Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — never took to the Senate floor to explain why she’d voted to oppose Jackson, whose nomination to district court judgeship had been so non-controversial that she’d been confirmed by voice vote eight years before. But on Monday, Murkowski reversed her earlier course on Jackson, voting to discharge her nomination to the Supreme Court from consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee after her GOP colleagues on that committee refused to advance it, resulting in a deadlock on the evenly-divided panel. She also announced that she would vote to confirm Jackson to the high court later this week.

In a statement, Murkowski said her decision to support Jackson rested in part on “[her] rejection of the corrosive politicization of the review process for Supreme Court nominees, which, on both sides of the aisle, is growing worse and more detached from reality by the year”.

More detached from reality? Whatever could’ve given her that idea?

Perhaps it was the performance of the same Republican senators who refused to advance Jackson’s nomination earlier this week, following their petulant performance in her confirmation hearing and the panel’s executive session to consider her nomination.

Republican senators spent the majority of their speaking time in both settings airing grievances regarding Democrats’ treatment of prior nominees going back to the Senate’s rejection of Judge Robert Bork more than three decades ago. They also subjected Jackson, a Harvard Law School graduate who has thrice been confirmed by the upper chamber (twice to court seats and once to a seat on the US Sentencing Commission), to some of the most bizarre inquiries ever directed at a nominee for the highest court in the land.

Here are some standouts.

An unconstitutional religious test

When South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham delivered an opening statement on the first day of Jackson’s confirmation hearing, he complained that Justice Brett Kavanaugh had been accused “of basically being Bill Cosby,” a reference to the disgraced comedian’s multiple rape accusations and overturned conviction for rape in Pennsylvania.

He also promised her that senators would not question her on “where you go to church, what kind of groups you’re in in church, how you decide to raise your kids, what you believe in, how you believe in God”.

“Nobody’s going to do that to you. And that’s a good thing,” he said. The next day, he broke that promise.

When it came time to question Jackson, his first query to her violated Article VI, Clause 3 of the US Constitution, which states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States”.

One day after promising no senator would ask Jackson where she attends church, he asked: “What faith are you, by the way?”

“Do you think we should catch more murderers?”

The vast majority of American police departments are local, funded by local taxes, traffic fines, and other sources including state funds and occasionally federal grants. Anyone with enough civic knowledge and involvement to be elected to the US Senate would know this, but that didn’t stop Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton from inquiring on the matter.

“Does the United States need more police or fewer police?” he asked.

Judge Jackson, a highly educated woman who graduated from Harvard University before attending law school, demonstrated her knowledge of the Judicial Branch’s role in response. “Senator, the determination about whether there should be more or fewer police is a policy decision by another branch of government,” she said.

Undeterred, Cotton continued pressing her for opinions unrelated to the job she was nominated for: “Do you think we should catch and imprison more murderers or fewer murderers?”

Jackson delivered a decidedly anti-murder response, telling Cotton: “it’s very important that people be held accountable for their crimes.”

A supposed “hidden agenda”

A question posed to Judge Jackson from Senator Marsha Blackburn came pretty close to “when did you stop beating your wife?” territory.

Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, questioned Jackson about her senior thesis written as a Harvard undergraduate decades ago, in which she argued that jurists had hidden agendas.

“So, what personal hidden agendas do you harbor or do you think other judges harbor?” she asked.

What is a woman?

A short time later, Blackburn asked Jackson about her service on the board of Georgetown Day School, a Washington, DC private school founded to provide education to Black and white children at a time when the city’s public schools were required by law to be segregated by race.

She alleged that GDS teaches kindergarteners that they can choose their gender, and asked Jackson if she believes schools should teach that to kids.

When Jackson replied that she did not remember what Blackburn was talking about, the senator told her such a claim was in a book taught at GDS. She added that GDS is a private school, at which point Blackburn interjected again: “I’m asking do you agree that schools should teach children that they can choose their gender?”

But Blackburn wasn’t done.

She later asked Jackson a question that will likely go down in the annals of Senate history: “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?”

Jackson replied that she could not, as she is not a biologist.

But what about Brett Kavanaugh?

When Justice Brett Kavanaugh came before the Senate for confirmation in 2018, Judge Jackson had a full case load in her Washington, DC courtroom, and was most likely not paying much attention to the news. But that didn’t stop Lindsey Graham from using his second round of questions to air yet more grievances about Kavanaugh’s contentious hearing.

Ignoring the fact that his allotted time had ended, Graham pressed Jackson on how she would feel “if I had a letter from somebody accusing you of something, a crime or misconduct, for weeks, and I give it to [Judiciary Committee Chairman] Senator [Richard] Durbin just before this hearing is over and not allow you to comment on the accusation”.

Jackson, more than a bit bewildered by the strange line of questioning, replied: “Senator, I’m not sure — I don’t understand the context of the question.”

Graham continued: “Well, let me — did you watch the Kavanaugh hearings?”

After Graham argued with Durbin over his extra questioning, Jackson was finally given a chance to respond.

“Senator, I don’t have any comment on what procedures took place in this body,” she said.