As the Senate Judiciary Committee began hearings to consider Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court, it became obvious that virtually all Republicans will oppose her.
That’s because over the past century, the Supreme Court is a political football as it has extended its jurisdiction into a wide range of political issues that lawmakers have refused to address.
Jackson fields loaded questions from Republicans opposing her nomination, selectively twisting her record to try to make a case against her.
The Republicans are treating questions from the judge’s career over the years as statements of opinion to portray her as a person undeserving of a seat on the high court as they mix race-baiting with slanderous accusations about terrorists and pedophiles.
For example, Jackson was vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission who asked questions about a Justice Department expert’s testimony when it held a hearing on sentencing guidelines in 2012.
One expert said that some child-sex offenders may not be actuallypedophiles but rather loners who are looking for like-minded company in child pornography circles.
“So I’m wondering whether you could say that there is a — that there could be a — less-serious child pornography offender who is engaging in the type of conduct in the group experience level?” Jackson asked the expert witness. “They’re very sophisticated technologically, but they aren’t necessarily that interested in the child pornography piece of it?”
From those questions, Republican Senator Josh Hawley extrapolated that Jackson had drawn conclusions that she clearly had not.
A tweet from RNC Research on Feb. 25 claimed that: “Ketanji Brown Jackson’s record also includes defending terrorists.” The truth is that anyone accused of a crime in America is entitled to legal counsel, as one of our fundamental constitutional rights.
The American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients is at least as old as John Adams’s representation of the British soldiers charged in the Boston massacre.
Attorneys who had either represented Guantanamo detainees or done policy advocacy work on behalf of the US Constitution have come under a shameful series of attacks in right-wing circles that are both unjust to the individuals in question and destructive of any attempt to build lasting mechanisms for counterterrorism adjudications.
When the US Supreme Court ruled that Guantánamo detainees could have habeas corpus lawyers, the Center for Constitutional Rights started reaching out to the bar — the corporate bar and the bar of New York and other cities — asking people to volunteer and assist in representing people who were detained at Guantánamo.
“To suggest that the Justice Department should not employ talented lawyers who have advocated on behalf of detainees maligns the patriotism of people who have taken honorable positions on contested questions and demands a uniformity of background and view in government service from which no administration would benefit,” said Benjamin Wittes, editor in chief of Lawfare and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
There are 39 Guantánamo Bay detainees left—only 12 of whom have been charged with a crime—in a prison that once held 780 prisoners and Amnesty International has called as “the gulag of our time.”
In 1987, President Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the Supreme Court after Justice Lewis Powell announced his retirement.
Bork’s nomination precipitated unprecedented media attention and efforts by interest groups to mobilize opposition to his confirmation, due to his criticisms of the Warren and Burger courts’ interpretations of the Constitution, especially of the First Amendment and the constitutional right to privacy.
Bork was also criticized over his role in the Saturday Night Massacre.
From 1973 to 1977, he served as Solicitor General under President Richard Nixon and President Gerald Ford, successfully arguing several cases before the Supreme Court.
In October 1973, Bork became acting U.S. Attorney General after Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus chose to resign rather than fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was investigating the Watergate scandal.
Unlike the principled men before him, Bork carried out Nixon’s order.
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