Highlights from Senate vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson

All Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, excluding Sen. Ben Sasse, have continued to rail against Chairman Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to allow them to see several pre-sentencing reports in child pornography cases Judge Jackson handled, claiming they can't evaluate her judicial record without them.

Because pre-trial sentencing reports are kept confidential to protect victims' privacy, Durbin has rejected the request which he called "reckless."

"No one wants to harm children," said Sen. Marsha Blackburn. R-Tenn., to which Durbin interrupted, “Then leave the reports concealed.”

“If you are a parent of some child who has been exploited, and you recognize this judge's name is perhaps presented at the trial, and realize that now the report that has been kept in confidence, all these years is not going to be handed over to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, what would you think as a mother?” Durbin said.

Durbin noted that it's information the Senate Judiciary Committee has never requested.

In a passionate opening statement, Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, lauded Judge Jackson’s record before the Senate Judiciary Committee and slammed what she called "unfair attacks" by Republicans -- though several GOP members on the committee weren't present to hear it.

"These bad-faith efforts exist despite a resume that arguably surpasses those of previous nominees," said Beatty, who was called as a witness by the committee's Democratic majority.

Beatty praised the history-making moment that would be Jackson’s confirmation and said Jackson "will be a judge that will serve all of America and all of America can be proud of."

"Judge Jackson's confirmation will send a message to Black women and little girls like my granddaughter Leah, whose mother is the first black woman to serve on the Tenth [Circuit] Court of Appeals, and Leah's first known president was the Black man and now she sees a Black female vice president," she said. "So if the guidance counselor tells her, ‘Your Goals are too high,’ she will remember how Judge Jackson soared against adversity as one of our nation's brightest legal minds."

Beatty also noted that Jackson was confirmed to a lifetime judicial appointment by the Senate on a bipartisan basis last year and that she clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer, who she’d be replacing, which she said wouldn't change the court’s ideological makeup.

The American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary praised Judge Jackson’s qualifications and her unanimous "well qualified" rating, the highest rating possible, before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

The peer review committee tasked with evaluating Jackson’s judicial qualifications to the Supreme Court said they conducted confidential interviews with 250 judges and attorneys with "firsthand knowledge" of Jackson and said that everyone they spoke to thought highly of the nominee.

“The question we kept asking ourselves: How does one human being do so much, so extraordinarily well?” said retired Judge Ann Claire Williams, the first Black woman to sit on Chicago-based federal district and appellate courts.

After several Republicans on the committee painted Jackson as "soft on crime," the retired judges rejected that characterization and specifically addressed that they found no issues with her sentences in child pornography cases or with her representation of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

“We heard consistently from not only defense counsel but prosecutors how unbiased Judge Jackson is. We heard things like ‘doing things by the books,’” said D. Jean Veta, another member of the ABA Standing Committee.

Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton, who pressed Jackson on her sentences in previous days, did not show up.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., opened the fourth and final day of Supreme Court confirmation hearings with praise of Judge Jackson for withstanding attacks this week he called "unfair, unrelenting and beneath the dignity of the United States Senate."

"My lasting impression is a judge who sat there through it all, head held high with dignity and determination and strength," Durbin said. "A lesser person might have picked up and told her family, 'We’re leaving. This is beyond the pale.' She didn’t -- and it says an awful lot to me about her character and why the president was correct in choosing her to be the next Supreme Court justice."

Durbin also praised his Democratic colleague Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who moved Jackson and others to tears with a speech Wednesday evening, and said that his wife told him when he got home that Booker “cleared the air, finally, and refocused on what we were doing and why we were here."

"And I have to tell you, his statement will go down in the annals of this committee and the United States Senate for the impact that they had," Durbin said.