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Texas’ Republican U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz previously voted against confirming President Joe Biden’s first Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson when she was before the Senate last year for an appointment to a lower court.
Biden announced Jackson’s nomination to the high court Friday morning.
“She is one of our nation’s brightest legal minds and will be an exceptional Justice,” he said in his announcement. If confirmed, Jackson’s nomination would be historic: she would be the first Black woman and sixth woman to sit on the highest bench in the country in its more than 200-year history.
Jackson currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a position she was confirmed to in June with a 53-47 Senate vote where Cruz and Cornyn joined all but three of their Republican colleagues in opposing.
Before her time on the appeals court, she served approximately eight years as a judge on the U.S. District Court in D.C.
Cornyn and Cruz both sit on the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, which will take the lead vetting Jackson’s nomination in Congress. Members of the committee will meet with the nominee individually before holding hearings and a vote to advance the nomination to the full Senate.
Democrats hold a slim 50-50 majority in the upper chamber, with Vice President Kamala Harris ready to cast a tie-breaking vote if necessary.
Cornyn said in a statement Friday morning that he looked forward to meeting Jackson and conducting a thorough review of her credentials.
“Ultimately I will be looking to see whether Judge Jackson will uphold the rule of law and call balls and strikes, or if she will legislate from the bench in pursuit of a specific agenda,” Cornyn said.
Cornyn also said that Jackson “will be given the dignity and respect she deserves,” adding that the confirmation will be “starkly” different from the treatment of judicial nominees during the Trump administration.
Jackson’s nomination follows up on a two-year-old promise Biden made during his presidential campaign that he would nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court.
Cruz, whose office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has previously called Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman “offensive” and insulting. Cruz and Jackson were classmates at Harvard Law School.
Cornyn, in less fiery language than Cruz, previously said that he wished Biden expanded his candidate pool beyond Black women to also consider factors like background and diversity of experience.
Jackson’s undergraduate and law degrees are both from Harvard University. She previously clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, whose spot she would fill on the bench in wake of his retirement.
