Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is poised to be elevated to the Supreme Court with bipartisan support after Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, indicated that she’d vote to confirm the 51-year old jurist.
Collins announced her support after holding a private meeting with Jackson on Tuesday afternoon.
“In recent years, senators on both sides of the aisle have gotten away from what I perceive to be the appropriate process for evaluating judicial nominees,” Collins said in an interview with The New York Times. “In my view, the role under the Constitution assigned to the Senate is to look at the credentials, experience and qualifications of the nominee. It is not to assess whether a nominee reflects the individual ideology of a senator or would vote exactly as an individual senator would want.”
“There can be no question that she is qualified to be a Supreme Court justice,” Collins added, noting Jackson’s “breadth of experience as a law clerk, attorney in private practice, federal public defender, member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission and district court judge for more than eight years.”
All 50 Democratic Senators have pledged to confirm President Joe Biden’s first nominee to the high court. With Collins’ support, Vice President Kamala Harris does not have to cast a tie-breaking vote.
It remains to be seen if other Republicans in the upper chamber will follow Collins’ lead. The White House is hopeful that Sens. Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski, two GOP moderates, will also vote to confirm the nation’s first Black female Supreme Court nominee.
Senator Richard Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, told reporters on Tuesday that he’s been quietly trying to recruit Republicans to Jackson’s camp.
“There are those within the Republican Party, I know from speaking to them, who understand the history, the significance of this nomination and want to make sure that Mr. Lincoln’s party, the Grand Old Party, is on board,” he said.