Judge Jackson. Congratulations. Welcome to you and your family.
I thank you for taking time to visit with me and my office after
the president nominated you.
Since President Biden announced his nominee for the Supreme Court.
I've been encouraging my colleagues to schedule meetings with you,
Judge Jackson and they have come off.
In addition, I've continually emphasized the need for a thorough
Respect. All I says
By the committee.
Now I want to talk a bit about what everyone watching should expect
from this hearing.
And what they shouldn't expect at the hearing.
We will conduct a thorough, exhaustive examination of Judge Jackson's
record and views.
We won't try to turn this into a spectacle based upon alleged
Process falls.
Good news on that front.
We're off to a very good start.
Unlike the start to the cabin or hearings.
Ah, we didn't have repeated choreographed interruptions of chairman
Durban during his opening statements.
Like Democrats interrupted me for more than an hour during my opening
statement on the cabin oil areas.
What we will do, however.
Is ask tough questions about Judge Jackson's judicial philosophy.
In any Supreme Court nomination.
The most important thing that I look for is the nominees view of
the law.
Judicial philosophy.
And view on the role of a judge in our constitutional system.
I'll be looking to see whether Judge Jackson is committed to the
constitutional originally understood.
We all know there's a difference of opinion about the role judges
should play.
Some of us believe the judges are supposed to interpret the law as
it was understood when written
Not make new law or simply fill in vacuums.
Those of us who share that view. Think that under our constitution
Congress and not the federal courts are given the authority to make
law and to set policy.
Now there are others who believe that the court should make policy.
They believe in a so called living constitution. They think that
the Constitution's text
And structure don't limit what a judge can do.
To them, deciding what the Constitution means is really a quote unquote
value judgment.
Under that approach.
Judges can exercise their own independent value judgments.
One of the leading advocates for this approach, explained that as
a judge, you quote
Reach the answer that he essentially your values tell you to reach
and hold.
In other words.
Those who said scribe to this philosophy.
Think that the founders really meant to hide elephants in mouse holes,
then
With a better creativity. These judges can always find that elephant
That sounds like a good job description instead.
For legislators and not for judges.
But for at least four years, Democrats just systematically voted
against many well credential nominees.
That were diverse professionally.
Diverse geographically.
Diverse religiously.
And revert
diverse ethnically
Was it gracious or anti women for them to do so?
I don't believe that it was
Democrats did it because the nominees didn't agree with living constitutionalism
just as Republicans have opposed nominees based upon their judicial
philosophy.
There are lots of problems with living constitutionalism in the Senate.
We spend a lot of time writing legislation.
We argue over the language.
We negotiate over how broad or narrow, certain provisions of laws
should be
If
We can't convince our colleagues to adopt all of our ideas.
We have been known to compromise every once in a while.
We depend on judges to interpret laws as we right there.
If judges impose their own policy preferences from the bench, and
he essentially revised the laws we pass. It makes it harder for us
to write good laws.
Sometimes we need to include a provision there's very broad to get
a colleague support.
If a judge rewrites the law later because of a notions about fairness
or equity or common good.
That unravels all of our work here in the Congress.
More importantly,
The American people should be able to read the law.
And know what it means. They shouldn't have to ask how a federal
judge who disagrees with law could reinterpret the words on that
page.
All of this leads.
To the conclusion as to why we must carefully examined federal judges
records, especially Supreme Court nominees.
Judge Jackson has served as an assistant public defender, worked
in private practice and served on the United States Sentencing Commission.
She also served as a federal district Court judge from 2013 to 2021.
She served on the D C circuit since June last year.
I'm sure senators will have a few questions for Judge Jackson about
the two opinions she's authored since joining the D C circuit.
As for District court record, there have been some accusations that
we cherry pick some of Judge Jackson's criminal cases.
Well, don't worry, We're going to talk about other cases as well.
I was disappointed that we weren't able to get bipartisan agreement.
To ask for Judge Jackson's documents from her time as vice chair
of the Sentencing Commission. The commission is an independent agency
created to advise and assist Congress.
And the executive branch.
In the development of effective and efficient
Crying policy, and that's a quote.
Unfortunately, it sounds like we'll have to wait until those documents
are required to be released. And that will be about 20 years from
now.
Democrats.
Have argued for time.
Democrats have argued that Judge Jackson's time on the commission
is an important part of her experience that she will drawn as a judge.
The Democrats are right on that point. That's why it would have been
good to see what our views were, as the head of the commission
explained in a letter to Senator Durbin.
The public documents turned over to this committee represent the
consensus views of the commission and not necessarily Judge Jackson's
own views.
The Obama White House sent us roughly 68,000 pages of material.
But more than 38,000 of the 68,000 pages are repeated
copies.
Of emails threads that the keep the track keeping track of the tweets
about the garland nomination. Those emails contained just one tweet.
About Judge Jackson.
More than 13,000 of the 68,000 pages are just list of previous nominations,
so that leaves only 84,000.
That we received from the White House that aren't obviously, uh,
useless, like all the other documents who received but for comparison,
The White House has still withheld 48,000 pages under the presidential
records.
And for you exemptions now that's a lot of hiding.
But the limited number of useful records that we received from the
Obama White House show exactly why the sentencing Commission documents
would have been important.
There are a number of dark money groups on the left that argue federal
judges should make policy decisions based on judges own values.
I've talked about that.
Troubling role of far left dark money groups like demand justice
have played in this administration judicial selection process.
When
The demand. Justice isn't creating short list for President Biden
depict judicial nominees from or putting out new litmus test. They're
running ads campaign.
Ah campaigns attacking the independence of the judiciary.
They have strongly supported the so called
Progressive prosecutors, who are soft on violent crime in the face
of rising crime waves and cities like San Francisco, Philadelphia,
Boston and New Los Angeles.
Now.
What does that have to do with the nominee before?
The Obama White House records indicate.
That a co founder of the demand, Justice played an important role
in Judge Jackson's nomination to the sentencing formation and the
district court.
The demand. Justice co founder even interview Judge Jackson about
the nomination to the sentencing commission measure, it would be
helpful.
To know what demand justice co founder learned from that process
and why they strongly support Judge Jackson.
However, it is an all being bad on the document front. I don't want
to make clear.
We'd ask for briefs that aren't available online for DC Circuit cases.
Judge Jackson worked on as an attorney.
At first, we were told they might not be available for a few weeks
to but to our presence. Surprise, pleasant surprise. We received
them early, apparently because the White House
It asked for the documents as well.
Judging by timetable we were originally given to get the breeze That
request was made after she was announce. Now those documents
Concerned. Judge Jackson's time is assistant federal public defender.
Democrats have accused Republicans of vilifying nominees who have
represented criminal
Defendants.
That's
Just not the case, and I think that's a very unfair accusation. Previous
Supreme Court nominees have also represented criminal defendants
on appeals.
Chief. The officers. Roger Roberts was appointed by Spring Court
to represent a defendant in an important criminal law case, and he
also helped represent an envoy, inmate.
In a Florida
death row.
And Justice. Barrett represented a criminal defendant appealing their
conviction while she was in private practice. Now I've distinguished
between two types of nominees.
Who have worked in criminal cases. There are Bill of rights attorneys
who want to protect defendants constitutional rights. Then there
are what I've called criminal defense lawyers.
Who disagree with our criminal laws. They want to undermine laws
that they have policy disagreements with and of course, that's a
very important difference.
Just a year ago.
Maybe it's an hour Two years ago, Democrats had no trouble opposing
nominees based on arguments these nominees made on behalf of clients.
I could read off quote of Democrats doing that to trump nominees,
but we only have
A few minutes for these opening statements, and I'd run out of time.
On a final note.
During Justice spirits confirmation hearing.
Democrats said that she would quote unquote judicial torpedo aimed
at protecting protections for priests conditions.
We heard that argument repeatedly.
Conservatives and anyone who actually looked at her record and laws
said that that was strictly nonsense.
But Democrats were sure otherwise.
Well when that case was finally decided Democrats were proven wrong.
I'm sure that won't deter any of my Democrat colleagues for making
some confident predictions this time around as well. But the probably
record
Should remember.
Their track record and perhaps take those claims.
With a grain of salt.
They were wrong.
In their strong declarations how justice spirit would rule.
Judge Jackson. Congratulations on your nomination. I look forward
to hearing from you about your record your views on the law and your
judicial philosophy. Thank you.