In statements issued this past Tuesday, GOP Senator of Maine Susan Colling claimed that she plans to place her vote in favor of confirming Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the now-open seat on the Supreme Court.
In the wake of meeting with the judge for a second time this past Tuesday, Collins stated to The New York Times via an interview that Jackson had expressly explained away a few of the various concerns collins had right after the judge stood in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee just last week.
“I have decided to support the confirmation of Judge Jackson to be a member of the Supreme Court,” stated Collins, who back in the fall of 2020 stood in opposition to the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, standing in objection because she claimed that the nomination was far to close to the presidential election.
The GOP senator stated that Jackson had taken steps to reassure her that she would not try to bend “the law to meet a personal preference,” claiming that Jackson met Collin’s high personal standards for a Supreme Court Justice.
“In recent years, senators on both sides of the aisle have gotten away from what I perceive to be the appropriate process for evaluating judicial nominees,” claimed Collins. “In my view, the role under the Constitution assigned to the Senate is to look at the credentials, experience and qualifications of the nominee. It is not to assess whether a nominee reflects the individual ideology of a senator or would vote exactly as an individual senator would want.”
If collins follows through with her vote for Jackson, claims The Times, Vice President Kamala Harris would not have to step in to cast her own tie-breaker vote resulting in an “unprecedented outcome that some saw as potentially damaging to the court’s standing,” stated the news outlet.
Collins was part of a group of three Republicans who chose to stand behind Jackson with their votes in favor of her confirmation to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit this June, as stated by The Times.
Her recent announcement is sure to anger the rest of the Republican senators, such as Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who recently brought to light Jackson’s overall record of handing out far too lenient sentences to criminals who distributed or watched child pornography.
Despite Jackson and her allies attempting to try and defend her choices by stating that her sentences were stemming from the recommendations of probation officers, Hawley and his team made sure to highlight that Jackson’s sentencing choices were even more lenient than even what said officers were recommending.
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