The Culture Wars Couldn't Stop Ketanji Brown Jackson's Confirmation
Everything’s part of the culture wars now, including Supreme Court confirmations. Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation process ended on Thursday when the Senate voted 53-47 to confirm her to the court, and it was quick — it took just six weeks to move from nomination to confirmation — and partisan. Many Republicans spent Jackson’s nomination hearings accusing her of giving light sentences to child pornographers (she didn’t), supporting teaching critical race theory in secondary school (no evidence for that either) and trying to let dangerous criminals out of prison (nope).
That’s pretty much what we can expect from Supreme Court confirmations going forward, even when the stakes for the court are very low. For the past six years, as Republicans refused to hold a hearing for former President Barack Obama’s last Supreme Court pick and then ended the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, narrow majorities to confirm justices have been the rule. And it’s particularly noteworthy that many Republican senators went all-out against the first Black woman to be nominated to the court, although her presence on the court won’t shift its ideological balance. In fact, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said that if his party had been in control, Jackson wouldn’t have gotten a hearing at all.
All of this signals that Supreme Court confirmations remain extremely contentious regardless of whether control of the court is at stake. And going forward, it’s unlikely that new Supreme Court nominees will make it onto the court unless the president’s party is also in charge of the Senate.
The partisanship of Jackson’s Supreme Court nomination was apparent from the roll-call vote. All 50 Democratic senators voted for Jackson — even Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who have voted against the party on other high-profile issues. This shouldn’t necessarily surprise us, though. Manchin and Sinema have voted for every single person Biden has nominated to be a federal judge so far, including Jackson when she was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last year. In fact, no Democratic senator has ever voted against one of Biden’s federal judicial picks.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-culture-wars-couldnt-stop-ketanji-brown-jacksons-confirmation/