The judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, chosen by Joe Biden for the Supreme Court of the United States, was confirmed this Thursday by the Senate in office becoming the first African-American woman to hold one of the Supreme Court’s nine lifetime seats in its 232-year history.
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In a first instance, Jackson passed a procedural vote with the support of 53 senators, while 47 voted against, the same final vote that ratified her in office and was announced by Vice President Kamala Harris amid a standing ovation from the legislative.
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Presiding over the session was African-American Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who delivered a stirring speech on the third day of hearings to assess the justice’s candidacy.
Booker criticized Republicans for having found any excuse to attack Jackson and applauded everything they did. the judge had managed to get there, also being a black woman and with the obstacles that this implies.
“No one is going to steal my joy,” Booker declared then, as Brown wiped away tears.
The confirmation in the Senate of Jackson, who since last year has been a judge on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, was taken for granted since the Democrats have the 51 votes needed to do so.
However, they also had the support of Republicans such as: Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah, so the vote had a bipartisan air as Biden wanted.
US Vice President Kamala Harris was tasked with presiding over the Senate this afternoon for the final vote to confirm Jackson.
Like Jackson, Harris is full of firsts, and in January 2021, she became the first African-American and the first woman of Indian or Asian descent to reach the vice presidency of the United States.
The arrival of Jackson to the court would not change the ideological composition of the US Supremewhich with six conservative and three progressive justices, is leaning more to the right than at any time since the 1930s.
However, it will expand the diversity of a court in which there are currently five white men, one black and three women, one of them Latina Sonia Sotomayor.
Jackson replaces one of those white men, Stephen Breyer, who is one of only three members of the court’s progressive caucus and who announced in January that he plans to retire at 83.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from EFE
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