Washington (AFP) - President Joe Biden's nominee to the Supreme Court took a step closer to being confirmed Thursday after a bruising week of hearings in which Republicans attempted to discredit her record in criminal sentencing.
The opposition party had signaled it wasn't up for a headline-grabbing fight over Kentanji Brown Jackson's nomination but in the end she endured almost 24 hours of sometimes brutal questioning on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The panel formally closed out the witness testimony portion of her confirmation with outside experts including lawyers from the American Bar Association, which has given its highest rating -- "well qualified" -- to Jackson.
"As Dr (Martin Luther) King said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. Today we must recognize that Judge Jackson's confirmation to the Supreme Court will bend that arc a little more," said Wade Henderson, head of umbrella rights organization The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
"All of us who are impacted by the decisions of the court can be confident Justice Jackson will continue to do her part to keep the sacred promise of our courts and our country."
The session was less contentious than the previous days' hearings, when several Republicans adopted the tone of prosecutors interrogating a defendant as they attempted to paint Jackson as soft on crime.
The 51-year-old appeals court judge was not at the hearing and will face no further questions, but was back in Congress anyway to meet senators as she seeks to become the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.
The committee's vote on Jackson's nomination is expected on April 4, with a final decision from the entire 100-member Senate due before lawmakers break for Easter on April 8.
The vote in the evenly-divided upper chamber is likely to be among the closest in history. In a 50-50 tie, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris would be the tiebreaker to put Jackson on the court.
