Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Bonus: Legal Expert Harry Litman Day 1 Ketanji Brown Jackson Confirmation Hearing Recap

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to MidasTouch Legal AF bonus edition. We have Supreme Court nomination of Katangi, Brown, Jackson, recap of day one brought to you by Harry P. Littman. Harry is a lawyer, a law professor, and political comment and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, Law, and Law, and Law, Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, Law, and Law, and Law, Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, Law, and Law, Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, and Law, Andy Ago and Harry is someone who has helped prepare Supreme Court nominees for this confirmation process. We will bring you Harry P. Litman's confirmation day one recap right now. Hi, I'm Harry Litman. Besides having a podcast, I cover the court quite a bit as the LA Times legal fairs reporter, but also as a former clerk as someone who in government helped prepare people for nomination battles,

Starting point is 00:01:12 including the justice that Katanji Brown Jackson hopes to replace Stephen Breyer. And I teach a course on the Supreme Court at UCLA law school. So with that experience and having seen a few confirmation battles, I wanted to give you my sense of how things went today for the newest nominee and first ever African-American woman. Hello, Midas touch nation. Okay. So day one, today of the Katanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearings, you didn't miss all that much, not to worry. It was largely opening statements by senators,

Starting point is 00:01:50 22 of them, on 11 on each side of the aisle. And most of them use their 10 minutes for reasons other than really talking to the nominees. So you had a lot of posturing, especially from presidential candidates. We had three or four of them. And mainly you had scripted comments. Nevertheless, I've been to a few of these and the scripts do tell you something and I think all in all it was a pretty good day for the candidate judge Katanji Brown Jackson. Now for sure there was some hot rhetoric from some people on the R side of the aisle, especially Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and oddly, Marsha Blackburn got in the fray.

Starting point is 00:02:47 But it wasn't really what they had advertised in advance. So in particular, no question at all about the judges' qualifications, people took that as a given. Not only no questions, but actually, they both sides pretty well accepted that her background, not simply race and gender, but her having served as a public defender as a longtime district court judge,

Starting point is 00:03:18 was a plus, a plus for the court. So the notion of sort of the different things she has done that others haven't came in only for praise. And we had thought that there might be a fair bit of attempts to try to throw her off stride, not, of course, she wasn't off stride. She was just sitting there all day, but to try to score points by saying you've represented some pretty nasty defendants, Guantanamo Bay, and as a public defender. That again, not only didn't it come up, but several Republicans actually endorsed the notion, which, you know, anyone who's serious about the legal system has to, that it's not just fine,

Starting point is 00:04:06 but a calling to represent defendants. So what did that leave? And what will she have to confront tomorrow when the real, when the gloves come off, because we will have over the next two days, two rounds at least of questioning by each of the 22 members. And her most ferocious antagonist looks like it'll be Josh Hawley. And his claim, and he made it clear in his opening remarks today, is going to be that she is soft on, well, soft on prime was where it looked as if he were going. Now he really seems to be isolating out a handful of decisions she made in child pornography cases. And he was able to say at each instance, the guidelines, the sort of grid that dictates federal sentences called for something a lot higher than you gave out. There's going to be some very ready answers for her tomorrow. First, she was a district

Starting point is 00:05:14 judge for nine years. She sentenced over 100 defendants. She will say, with some force, look at the entire record rather than plucking out a couple times when you say, I've gone easy. Second, and maybe this is where she'll lead with, she has remarkably strong endorsement from police groups, federal order of police, and she herself comes from a law enforcement family. And then finally, they may or may not get here, but there's some reasons that child pornography sentences are odd, both in herd district and around the country, including Josh Hollis district. 80% of sentences are below the so-called guidelines number. And without boring you too much with the legal details, it's basically because the guidelines were written for a pre-internet time.

Starting point is 00:06:05 And so now today, child pornographic defendants, the wrong way to put a child pornography defendants, have many, many more individual images, and they come by them in a way that the law would have made hars h before they receive them the internet. That's the high-minded defense of why really are unfair, but I know that she's better off the level of generalities.

Starting point is 00:06:42 You'll hear hot rhetoric from others, crews in particular, but from my read today, most of that really is sort of general, we hate Democrat kind of stuff, culture wars, Democrats want to make law and legislate from the bench. One senator, Mike Lee, actually made a big, his whole 10 minutes about, don't expand the court. In other words, issues that they, that their constituents might care about, that they could fundraise off of, but are not really direct assaults on Jackson herself. The highlight for her, and probably the whole whole day she went, you know, politely smiled or just stayed composed during these 22 10-minute statements and came out at the

Starting point is 00:07:32 end with a really luminous statement about her own background. Her parents married 54 years, were there together. Her college roommates, her husband and family, and she really came across as, you know, somebody who was more than a name, a judge, or even a particular gender and race, but as this sort of very virtuous American success story of the sort that really the Supreme Court doesn't have much of it as has had people with much more elite backgrounds. So it was really a very winning statement she gave at the end composed, but also upbeat. She had a sort of good cheer about her. So I think that gives her a little bit of momentum going into tomorrow. It'll be no picnic and she'll definitely face some hot questioning, but my sense is that both sides kind of see her as confirmation bound, even if, you know, the the White House hopes it's bipartisan. And these days,

Starting point is 00:08:47 51 52 53 votes will count as bipartisan. So you will not see the Republicans as a party engaging in a sort of blood battle, but even you will see a few individual Republican senators talking tough. So all in all, a pretty good day for Katai and G Brown, Jackson, already 54% of the country supported her nomination. And that'll probably go up a little after people have seen her.

Starting point is 00:09:19 So there you have it, minus touch nation, look forward to giving you a bit of a more substantive report tomorrow when the questioning starts in earnest.

Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Bonus: Legal Expert Harry Litman Day 1 Ketanji Brown Jackson Confirmation Hearing Recap

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