Highlights from Senate vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson

Judge Jackson recounted in a 2017 speech that her parents, Johnny and Ellery Brown, wanting to show pride in their African ancestry, asked her aunt, who was then in the Peace Corps in West Africa, for a list of African girl names.

Taking one of her suggestions, Jackson's parents named her Ketanji Onyika, which translates to "lovely one."

Jackson's parents grew up in South Florida under segregation, "but never gave up hope that their children would enjoy the true promise of America,” Biden said at a White House event last month introducing Jackson.

Biden said Jackson was a "star student" who fell in love with a law career while watching her own father going to law school at the University of Miami, often drawing on coloring books at the dining room table next to her father's homework. Jackson went on to attend Harvard Law School herself, despite some cautioning her against setting her sights too high.

“My life has been blessed beyond measure and I do know that one can only come this far by faith,” Jackson said at the White House. “Among my many blessings, the very first is the fact that I was born in this great country. The United States of America is the greatest beacon of hope and democracy the world has ever known.”

She married Patrick Jackson, a general surgeon, in 1996, and the couple has two daughters, Talia, 21, and Leila, 17.

With Biden's nomination of Judge Jackson, he officially followed through on his 2020 campaign promise to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court and his vow to make the high court look more "like America."

"For too long our government, our courts haven't looked like America," Biden said at a White House event last month introducing his historic pick. "And I believe it is time that we have a court that reflects the full talents and greatness of our nation with a nominee of extraordinary qualifications. And that we inspire all young people to believe that they can one day serve their country at the highest level."

A former clerk to retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, Jackson has more than eight years experience on the federal bench, following a path through the judiciary traveled by many nominees before her. If confirmed, she would be the first federal public defender to serve on the Supreme Court and the first justice since Thurgood Marshall to have criminal defense experience.

"She listens. She looks people in the eye, lawyers, defendants, victims and families. And she strives to ensure that everyone understands why she made a decision, what the law is and what it means to them," Biden said. "She strives to be fair, to get it right, to do justice."

While the White House was eager to follow through on Biden's pledge, an ABC News/Ipsos poll from January found just 23% of Americans said they wanted him to automatically follow through on his history-making commitment. Over three-quarters of Americans (76%) said they wanted Biden to consider "all possible nominees."

While Judge Jackson has more experience fielding questions during high-intensity Senate hearings than any Supreme Court nominee since Clarence Thomas in 1991, she has described the process as "extremely nerve-wracking," although she's seen Senate confirmation three times.

To offset that nervous energy, Jackson says she took up -- knitting.

"The lights are as bright as they are in here, in terms of cameras and attention, and you do your best not to make a fool of yourself in front of the senators," Jackson said in a conversation for the D.C. Circuit Historical Society in 2019.

She said that she "started so many scarves I could have outfitted a small army," recalling her first Senate confirmation process in 2012, when she was nominated by then-President Barack Obama to serve on the U.S. District Court in Washington. She currently sits on currently sits Washington's federal appellate court.

Ahead of this week's marathon questioning, Jackson met one-on-one with 44 senators ahead of her hearings next week, including all members of the Judiciary Committee and its 11 Republican members, according to former Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, the White House "sherpa" for the nominee, escorting her on Capitol Hill.

Several GOP senators have telegraphed plans to question Judge Jackson's defense of detainees at Guantanamo Bay as a private defense attorney, her support of reduced sentences for convicted drug offenders and the backing of her nomination by outside progressive advocacy groups.

In a sign the hearings could get contentious, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri -- a former Supreme Court clerk for Chief Justice John Roberts and a potential presidential hopeful -- suggested in a barrage of tweets Thursday that Jackson has a "long record" of letting child porn offenders "off the hook" and suggested she is "soft on crime."

White House press secretary Jen Psaki pushed back last week, calling it a "last-ditch eve-of-hearing desperation attack."

"The facts are that, in the vast majority of cases involving child sex crimes, broadly, the sentences Judge Jackson imposed were consistent with or above what the government or U.S. probation [authorities] recommended. And so, this attack that we've seen over the last couple of days relies on factual inaccuracies and taking Judge Jackson's record wildly out of context," Psaki said.

While court records show that Jackson did impose lighter sentences than federal guidelines suggested, Hawley's insinuation neglects critical context, including the fact that the senator himself has voted to confirm at least three federal judges who also engaged in the same practice. ABC News' Devin Dwyer fact checks Hawley here.

-ABC News' Devin Dwyer