Highlights from Senate vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson

Hoping to disarm GOP attacks, Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., posed the first question to Judge Jackson and gave her the opportunity to address her judicial philosophy after Republicans on Monday swiped at her for claiming previously that she doesn't have one.

"So would you like to comment at the outset, of those who are looking for a label, what your position is on judicial philosophy?" Durbin said.

Jackson replied that she has developed a methodology that she uses when approaching any case "to ensure that I am ruling impartially and that I am adhering to the limit on my judicial authority."

"I am acutely aware that as a judge in our system, I have limited power, and I am trying, in every case, to stay in my lane," she said.

Without importing her personal views or policy preferences, Jackson explained that she follows three steps when approaching a case: First, she enters each from a position of neutrality. Next, she intakes the parties' arguments, and the last step, she said, is the interpretation and application of the law to the facts.

"The entire exercise is about trying to understand what those who created this policy or this law intended," she said. "As a lower court judge, I'm bound by the precedent. Even in the Supreme Court, if I was fortunate enough to be confirmed, there's stare decisis, a binding kind of principle that the justices look at when they're considering precedent. So, all of these things come into play in terms of my judicial philosophy."

The second day of confirmation hearings for Judge Jackson -- Biden’s first nominee to the Supreme Court and the first Black woman considered to the nation’s highest court in its 233-year history -- are officially underway.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., gaveled in the hearing room just after 9 a.m. In a show of support, Jackson's husband, Patrick, was seated behind her in the room, as he was Monday.

Jackson faces a marathon day of questioning from the committee’s 22 members, with each senator receiving 30-minutes to question Jackson one on one for a total of 11 hours Tuesday. Senators, in order of seniority, will take turns probing her judicial philosophy, her record as a public defender and her legal opinions spanning nearly nine years on the bench.

In a sign of COVID restrictions easing across the country, almost no one in the hearing room was wearing a mask, and for the first time since the pandemic, for each half-hour of the proceedings, up to 60 members of the public invited by senators will also be allowed to attend.

Judge Jackson arrived on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning to continue a marathon week of hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will need to approve sending her nomination to the Supreme Court to the full Senate for a floor vote.

The hearings will gavel in at 9 a.m. and each of the committee's 11 Republican and 11 Democratic members will have up to 30 minutes to question Jackson one on one.

Jackson, 51, was sworn in Monday and delivered an opening statement to reintroduce herself to the nation.

"I hope that you will see how much I love our country, and the Constitution and the rights that make us free," she told the senators who will vote on her historic nomination.

She also hinted at how she might address GOP critiques on Tuesday, telling senators that she adopts a "neutral posture" and sees her judicial role as "a limited one."

While Democrats have emphasized the historic nature of Judge Jackson's nomination and her compelling personal story, Republicans have vowed "thorough and civil" scrutiny of her record in hundreds of cases, which several have alleged shows she is "soft on crime."

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., leveled the most pointed critique of Jackson's record so far in his opening statement Monday, accusing her of a "long record" of letting child porn offenders "off the hook" in sentencing. The White House, several independent fact-checkers, and conservative outlet The National Review have called the claims misleading and unfair.

Republicans including Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., have also made clear they will also take aim at Jackson's defense of an accused terrorist held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay -- a case she was assigned to as a federal public defender. Jackson has previously explained her service as an example of belief in constitutional values.

Others indicated they planned to press Jackson to characterize her judicial philosophy, though she's said outright she doesn't have one, and to answer for progressive legal advocacy groups backing both her nomination and expanding the Supreme Court's bench.

-ABC News' Devin Dwyer