Ketanji Brown Jackson takes a deep breath and struggles to keep his composure.

Joe Biden's candidate for the vacant post on the Supreme Court was extensively prepared for the hearing.

Senate Judiciary Committee members have said the confirmation process for the 51-year-old lawyer, who the president wants to become the first African-American constitutional judge, will be civil.

But there are Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, who have their own agenda.

Majid Sattar

Political correspondent for North America based in Washington.

  • Follow I follow

The marathon session on the Capitol Hill in Washington lasts 13 hours on Tuesday.

The Republican right wing just asked her if she knew that Georgetown Day School, a private school in Washington where the judge sits on the board of directors, teaches critical race theory.

He presented a book that said babies are taught to be racist or non-racist.

"Do you agree with the book's statement that babies are racist," he asks.

Jackson has to swallow.

She is silent for a few moments and looks at Cruz in irritation.

Then she says, "I don't think any kid should be made to feel like they're racist." She didn't review the books.

The supervisory board is not responsible for the curriculum.

Questions for social media

The Texas senator graduated from Harvard law a year before Jackson.

It is the lawyer's third hearing, following her nominations to Washington Federal Court and the Capital District Court of Appeals.

Cruz will know that Jackson will almost certainly be confirmed by the Senate in April - by a narrow majority of Democrats.

Possibly even with a few votes from the moderate Republican camp.

Cruz also knows that Jackson's appointment will not change the Supreme Court's policy.

She is to replace the liberal constitutional judge Stephen Breyer.

The conservative majority is not in danger.

Six of the nine justices were nominated by Republican presidents.

Cruz is about something else.

The endorsement process is a forum to raise your profile and position yourself.

Not just among Republicans.

Kamala Harris famously used her Judiciary Committee seat in 2018 to grill Donald Trump's controversial Constitutional Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, in preparation for her bid in the Democratic primary.

It didn't go as hoped, but Harris ended up becoming vice president.

Cruz, who was Trump's last competitor in the Republican primary in 2016, is hoping for another chance in 2024. Several right-wing Republicans, who wish Trump didn't run again, are eyeing his movement.

And the "Critical Race Theory", which in their opinion should make the (white) Americans mad about their history,

is the appropriate catchphrase to score points at the base.

Cruz's questioning of his fellow student was then fed into social media as a video clip, where it is said to be disseminated in right-wing circles.

Cruz has competition.

Josh Hawley follows the same strategy.

On January 6, 2021, the young senator from Missouri, along with Cruz, was one of the protagonists in the certification process who lodged an objection to Biden's election victory.

In his questioning on Tuesday, he focused on the issue of child pornography.

The reason was the case of an 18-year-old defendant whom Jackson had once sentenced to three months in prison for possession of child pornography images, which put her at the lower end of the recommended sentence.

Jackson pointed out that most of the defendant's pictures showed people who were only a few years younger than him.

Hawley replied that one picture showed an eight-year-old child.

Commitment to "Originalism"

A lengthy debate ensued about the fact that Congress actually wanted to legally limit the judiciary's discretion in child pornography cases in order to enforce long prison sentences, but the Supreme Court, under the aegis of conservative constitutional judge Antonin Scalia, had declared this null and void.

Democrats also noted that judge nominees once nominated by Trump have also returned sentences on the lower end of the recommended sentence in similar cases.

Cruz didn't want to leave the issue of pedophilia to Hawley.

He also accused Jackson of recognizing a pattern of advocacy with regard to sexual predators.

Democrats later pointed out indignantly that the senators wanted to serve the QAnon supporters, who are now powerful within the Trump movement.

The conspiracy theorists spread, among other things, that Democrats operated pedophile rings.

Away from the sideshow of Senators Cruz and Hawley, Jackson certainly revealed the ambition to get one or the other vote from the conservative camp.

To refute the accusation that she is a left-wing lawyer who tends towards judicial activism and sees the Supreme Court as a substitute legislature, she confessed to "originalism".

Conservative legal philosophy states that the interpretation of the constitution only has to be based on the original intentions of the founding fathers.

Jackson cautioned, however, that their methodology also includes other elements.

Your statement may have surprised some on the left wing of the Democrats.

That's probably why Dick Durbin, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, himself a centrist with the Democrats, said on Wednesday that it is sometimes a challenge