NC Sen. Tillis questions Supreme Court nominee Jackson. Five things he focused on.

Sen. Thom Tillis concluded his questioning of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson Wednesday evening much softer than he started earlier that morning.

He thanked her for her service, complimented her for the strength she had demonstrated over the past three days and yielded back time to his colleagues.

“I thought you presented yourself well when there was a lot of pressure, and that demonstrates a certain temperament and poise,” Tillis said. “I can’t imagine what’s going on inside your head, but at least overtly, you did very well and you should be proud of that. It’s not an easy thing.”

President Joe Biden nominated Jackson to replace Justice Stephen Breyer, who plans to retire at the end of the current Supreme Court term. Jackson’s nomination still needs to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Each of the 22 senators on the Judiciary Committee had two opportunities to question Jackson about her background in the legal system. The senators offered opening statements Monday and began questions Tuesday morning. Tillis’ opportunities to ask questions came up twice on Wednesday.

Though the process is long, a lighthearted moment by Tillis caused both the senator and North Carolina to trend on Twitter.

“Listen, I’m not an attorney,” Tillis said. “I watch ‘Law & Order’ from time to time, so I’m not going to get into a debate...,” Tillis said in response to a disagreement over a First Amendment case the two had been discussing.

Tillis spent the majority of his allotted 30 minutes Wednesday morning offering his opinion on adding more justices to the Supreme Court and whether the Senate should end the use of the filibuster, a tool used to prolong debate for an unlimited amount of time.

He also addressed criticism his colleagues had faced, Jackson’s record on freedom of speech, whether she would release all prisoners because of the pandemic and whether she was too empathetic to be a judge.

Among the topics of their conversation:

Packing the court and the filibuster

Tillis followed up on questions Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, asked Jackson Tuesday about adding more justices to the Supreme Court. Jackson told Kennedy it’s a question she hadn’t thought about before, but she understood arguments from both sides.

Tillis brought out a chart of what he called “dark money groups” that want to pack the U.S. Supreme Court with additional justices. Jackson told Tillis she had never seen most of the names listed on his chart and wasn’t associated with any of them.

He said the main group, Demand Justice, wants to add four more seats to the Supreme Court bench, with a goal of packing the court with justices who share the group’s views and philosophies. He added that the group advertises its desire to “nuke the filibuster” to make its plan happen.

Tillis predicted those strategies would damage or destroy the Senate and Supreme Court.

“I think it was Federalist Papers 78, where Hamilton talked about the vulnerability or I think, the feebleness — now I think he was arguing, the case for lifetime appointments — but I do think that the Supreme Court is a fragile institution and I do believe that if we think its politicized now, think about how it would be, if we destroy the institution of the Senate on a strict party-line, partisan vote, to expand the court.”

He added that he isn’t against expansion if the caseload warranted it, but he won’t do it for partisan gain.

Tillis eventually asked Jackson a few questions but not without first saying, “I didn’t expect you to respond to my riff on packing the court. Just to net it out it’s a bad, bad, bad idea.”

Ridicule of the right

Before Tillis began addressing Jackson, he addressed criticism that he said his Republican colleagues faced overnight from the media.

“I thought it interesting that they were ridiculing some of my colleagues on this side of the aisle for bringing up the behavior of past Supreme Court hearings,” Tillis said, mentioning specifically the hearings of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, which have occurred in the past four years.

Republicans repeatedly mentioned throughout Jackson’s hearing how Democrats treated Barrett and Kavanaugh.

Tillis called that treatment “abhorrent” and said his colleagues had a right to bring it up during this hearing.

“This really is the appropriate venue to do it,” Tillis said.

Freedom of speech

Tillis asked Jackson about a case she worked on in Massachusetts regarding an abortion clinic. He told her he wanted to be upfront that he is a Catholic who is anti-abortion and worked on anti-abortion bills in North Carolina.

But Tillis added that the case actually was a First Amendment rights case. He said that Jackson helped create a buffer zone for anti-abortion protesters who were noisy and getting in the faces of women seeking an abortion at a clinic, but did not give the same restrictions to pro-choice advocates.

“No, I believe that it was viewpoint neutral, meaning it wasn’t about what the people were saying,” Jackson said. “It was about clearing a path to allow people to enter the clinic. The laws of the time were about how far people have to be kept back, whether they were pro-life or pro-choice because they were blocking the entrance.”

COVID-19 release

A court opinion Jackson wrote near the start of the pandemic also came up during Tillis’ questioning. Tillis asked Jackson if she meant to imply that at least 1,200 prisoners should be released in Washington, regardless of their crimes.

Jackson told Tillis he needed to read two lines down in her opinion, where she noted that COVID-19 was ravaging the jails, but each case needed to be taken on an individual basis and examined by determining what harm someone’s release would cause to the community or an individual.

Tillis signed a letter at the beginning of the pandemic that called for the most vulnerable prisoners to be placed in home confinement on a case-by-case basis, which he noted during the hearing.

Empathy

Tillis said in his opening statement Monday that he admired many qualities about Jackson’s character.

On Wednesday morning, those qualities were included in some of the areas that caused him concerns.

Throughout the week, senators brought up cases in which Jackson is accused of giving defendants lesser sentences than federal guidelines suggested. Tillis said he worried that Jackson’s compassion toward others could lead to a pattern of lesser sentences and recidivism.

“Can you understand how somebody who, from our side of the aisle, could say that maybe there is some pattern to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who has been incarcerated in some cases with very serious problems?” Tillis asked.

“... If I take a look at your responses to some of my colleagues’ questions, and your statements to some of the defendants, it seems as though you’re a very kind person, and that there’s at least a level of empathy, that enters into your treatment of a defendant that some could view as maybe beyond what some of us would be comfortable with, with respect to administering justice.”

Jackson told Tillis that Congress gave trial judges directions to punish defendants but also to make sure that they’re rehabilitated. She disagreed with his assessment of her work and being overly compassionate. She said she often was giving defendants lengthy sentences, while ensuring that they could come out on the other side.

“I was the one in my sentencing practices who explained those things in an interest of furthering Congress’s direction that we’re supposed to be sentencing people so that they can ultimately be rehabilitated to the benefit of society as a whole,” Jackson said.

Tillis revisited this discussion in his closing statements Wednesday night and told Jackson he would submit questions about her sentences he wanted her to follow up on with the committee, while acknowledging that it’s not fair to expect her to remember the mitigating factor of every case she’s ever presided over.

He also acknowledged Congress is also at fault for the current sentencing guidelines, and when the two sides cool off from the current debate over Jackson, they need to be part of the solution and take up policy on those guidelines.

For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at https://campsite.bio/underthedome or wherever you get your podcasts.

This story was originally published March 23, 2022 at 2:14 PM.

Danielle Battaglia

McClatchy DC

Danielle Battaglia is the congressional impact reporter for The News & Observer and The Charlotte Observer, leading coverage of the impact of North Carolina’s congressional delegation and the White House. Her career has spanned three North Carolina newsrooms where she has covered crime, courts and local, state and national politics. She has won two McClatchy President’s awards and numerous national and state awards for her work.