[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 61 (Wednesday, April 6, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2033-S2034]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                  Nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson

  Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I rise tonight to support Ketanji Brown 
Jackson's nomination to serve as an Associate Justice on the U.S. 
Supreme Court.
  Judge Jackson comes to this floor with impeccable credentials. She 
graduated from Harvard magna cum laude. She graduated with honors from 
Harvard Law School, where she edited the Harvard Law Review.
  After graduation, Judge Jackson worked at top firms in private 
practice and secured three prestigious clerkships, including one for 
Justice Breyer on the Supreme Court of the United States. Later, she 
served as a public defender, representing people who couldn't afford a 
lawyer.
  I can't think of better evidence of her commitment to equal justice 
under the law, where everyone, regardless of their means, has the right 
to fair representation.
  Judge Jackson is clearly qualified for this position. There is nobody 
who doubts that. My colleagues know it because the Senate has confirmed 
her three times with bipartisan support: first, to serve as Vice Chair 
of the U.S. Sentencing Commission; second, for the U.S. District Court 
for the District of Columbia; and, last, for the U.S. Court of Appeals 
for the DC Circuit.
  Taken together, Judge Jackson comes to this floor with the best legal 
training America can offer: a decade of experience on the Federal bench 
and a consistent record of bipartisan support here on this floor.
  I had the opportunity to meet with Judge Jackson 2 weeks ago, after 
she had been rolled around in the barrel--that is one way of saying 
it--during the confirmation hearings that people all over the country 
watched. And in our conversation, after she had been through all of 
that turmoil, she told me about how her parents had attended segregated 
schools in Miami before working as public school teachers here in 
Washington, DC. Her dad went on to be a lawyer, a lawyer for the Miami 
school district, something I appreciate, having been a superintendent 
of schools.

  Unlike her parents, Judge Jackson grew up in America after the civil 
rights laws of the 1960s and remembered how hard her parents worked 
every single day to give her opportunities they never even dreamed of 
for themselves. And she seized those opportunities. She earned top 
grade. She was elected student body president.
  And when she told her guidance counselor she wanted to apply to 
Harvard, the counselor warned she shouldn't set her ``sights so high.'' 
Fortunately for America, she set her sights high. She set her sights 
where they should have been set. She followed the high example of her 
parents, working hard and impressing everyone along the way, friends 
and colleagues and mentors, who are virtually beating down the doors of 
this Capitol to tell us what a thoughtful, fairminded, and principled 
Justice she would be.
  That hasn't stopped some colleagues from distorting her record, 
trying to say to the American people that she is soft on crime. That 
would come as news, I think, to the Fraternal Order of Police, who has 
endorsed her candidacy for the Court. It would come as news to the 
International Association of Chiefs of Police. Both have endorsed her 
nomination. They see what is obvious to anyone who fairly reviews her 
record, which is that Judge Jackson has spent her entire career devoted 
to the rule of law.
  Her brother and two uncles served as police officers. So law 
enforcement isn't some academic abstraction for her. It is literally 
her family.
  The Presiding Officer knows something about that, I think, in his 
family history as well.
  In our meeting, I asked Judge Jackson what makes a good judge. We had 
a long talk about that. One of the things she said was communication, 
because judges have to explain their reasoning in every decision, which 
is a lot more than I can say for the U.S. Senate.
  She also said that it is the unique role of the judge to identify and 
to extract their bias before every case. And if you look at her more 
than 570 written decisions, it is clear how seriously she takes that 
responsibility.
  I was just on the phone with some people from Colorado before I came 
over here. And I said to them--I told them I was coming out here to 
give this speech. And I said to them--these are old, old friends of 
mine--that I can't remember a time when I sat down with somebody and 
had a 30-minute conversation where I came away more impressed than I 
was by Judge Jackson.
  I found her to be both brilliant and completely down-to-earth, which 
is, I think, a particularly important combination for a judge at any 
level--at any level--to have both the intellect to grapple with the 
nuances of the law and the experience to appreciate how it affects real 
people.
  It wasn't that long ago that Judge Jackson would have received over 
90 votes on this floor, just like her mentor, Justice Breyer, did; just 
like qualified judges when I was in law school myself. The Senate 
confirmed Justice Breyer 96 to 3, just like we confirmed Justice Scalia 
98 to 0, and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor got 91 to nothing. Somebody 
was out that day. I guarantee you they would have voted for her if they 
had been here.
  Each time that happened, the Senate reinforced the independence of 
the judiciary, set aside our partisan politics, and stood up, I think, 
for integrity and for the rule of law.
  I am sad. I am sad tonight that Judge Jackson won't get 99 votes 
tomorrow, even though she deserves it. And that is not a reflection on 
her. As I said, if this were an earlier day in the Senate, she would 
get 99 votes. She would have gotten 99 votes if she had come in a 
different era. It is a reflection of how we, as Senators--and I among 
them--have shredded our constitutional responsibility to advise and 
consent.
  It is my hope that by the time--I was going to say, when my children 
are adults; they almost are adults; they

[[Page S2034]]

are adults--but by the time they are running the country, with 
everybody else in their generation, that we will have figured out a way 
to return the Senate to a place where we take our responsibility--our 
constitutional responsibility--to advise and consent seriously, and we 
find a way to make it, once again, a bipartisan effort in this place, 
and find a way to stitch ourselves back together again. I am prepared 
to work with anybody on the floor to try to do that. But in the 
meantime, this really, in my view, is a moment to celebrate. It is a 
moment to celebrate.

  In the last few weeks, my office has literally been flooded with 
messages from Coloradans telling me what an extraordinary Justice Judge 
Jackson would make. And they don't have to persuade me. Judge Jackson 
is an inspiration to me and to so many Americans, to millions and 
millions of Americans.
  In the past few weeks, I couldn't help but imagine what it would mean 
to the students I used to work for in the Denver Public Schools to see 
Judge Jackson on the Court, the same Court that once ruled in Dred 
Scott v. Sandford that her ancestors were little more than property, a 
Court that codified in Plessy v. Ferguson the segregated schools that 
her parents were forced to attend and the segregated hotels and buses 
and movie theaters they endured every single day, day after day.
  And it is a reminder that change is possible in America. Our country 
isn't perfect--far from it. Our history has always been a battle 
between the highest ideals expressed in our Constitution and our worst 
impulses as human beings.
  And if you look at our history, if you really look at our history, 
the path from cases like Dred Scott and Plessy to Brown and Obergefell 
was cleared, as it always is, by Americans who refused to give up on 
our highest ideals; who insisted, as Dr. King once said, that we make 
real the promise of our democracy.
  This week is a victory for our highest ideals and for the promise of 
American democracy. It is a moment to celebrate a nation that, as Judge 
Jackson said, in one generation went from forcing her parents to live 
under Jim Crow to elevating her to the highest Court in the land.
  After carefully reviewing her record, I believe that Judge Jackson 
will join the ranks of Earl Warren, Thurgood Marshall, and Ruth Bader 
Ginsburg, Justices who have helped bridge the gap between the words 
written in our Constitution and their reality in America today, and I 
hope she will join the Court's great dissenters, Justices like Justice 
Harlan, who opposed decisions that outlawed the minimum wage, or 
Justices Roberts and Murphy, who refused to condone the internment of 
Japanese Americans in Colorado and across the country. All of those 
Justices stood not for an ideology but for the American values etched 
in our Constitution: freedom, equality, democracy, and the rule of law.
  I am confident that Judge Jackson will stand for those values fairly, 
impartially, and without prejudice; and tomorrow I will 
enthusiastically vote for her confirmation. I would suggest that 
everybody in this Chamber would have a good reason to vote for her 
confirmation, and I hope they will consider it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

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