Collins to Back Jackson for Supreme Court, Giving Her a G.O.P. Vote [View all]
Source: New York Times
WASHINGTON — Senator Susan Collins of Maine plans to vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, ensuring that President Biden’s nominee and the first Black woman to be put forward for the post will receive at least one Republican backer. After a second personal meeting with the judge on Tuesday afternoon, Ms. Collins said Judge Jackson had alleviated some concerns that surfaced after last week’s contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, when Republicans attacked the nominee for her record and grilled her on a host of divisive issues.
“I have decided to support the confirmation of Judge Jackson to be a member of the Supreme Court,” Ms. Collins said in an interview after the meeting. The centrist senator, often a key vote on Supreme Court clashes, said that she had been reassured that Judge Jackson would not be “bending the law to meet a personal preference” and that the nominee met her personal standard for serving on the court.
“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,” she said. “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.”
Her decision will allow Mr. Biden and Senate Democrats to claim some degree of bipartisanship around the historic nomination, though whether other Republicans will join Ms. Collins remains unclear. If Democrats stay united, it would also avoid the spectacle of Vice President Kamala Harris having to break a tie to seat a nominee on the Supreme Court, an unprecedented outcome that some saw as potentially damaging to the court’s standing.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/30/us/politics/ketanji-brown-jackson-susan-collins.html
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