Highlights from Senate vote to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson

In his questioning, Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill, criticized attacks from Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who accused Jackson Monday of a "long record" of letting child porn offenders "off the hook" in sentencing. Noting that several independent fact-checkers, including ABC News, have found the claims misleading, Durbin gave Jackson a chance to respond by asking what was going through her mind when Hawley leveled that criticism Monday.

"As a mother and a judge who has had to deal with these cases, I was thinking that nothing could be further from the truth," Jackson said, taking a tough tone. "These are some of the most difficult cases that a judge has to deal with because we're talking about pictures of sex abuse of children. We're talking about graphic descriptions that judges have to read and consider when they decide how to sentence in these cases, and there's a statute that tells judges what they're supposed to do."

She noted that federal sentencing laws are set by Congress, and the statute says, "Calculate the guidelines, but also look at various aspects of this offense, and impose a sentence that is, quote, sufficient but not greater than necessary to promote the purposes of punishment," she said.

Calling the crimes "sickening and egregious," Jackson went on to recall a story she said she tells every child porn defendant "when I look in the eyes of a defendant who is weeping because I'm giving him a significant sentence."

"What I say to him is, 'Do you know that there is someone who has written to me and who has told me that she has developed agoraphobia? She can not leave her house because she thinks that everyone she meets will have seen her, will have seen her pictures on the internet. They're out there forever. At the most vulnerable time of her life, and so she's paralyzed," she said.

"I tell that story to every child porn defendant, as a part of my sentencing, so that they understand what they have done. I say to them that there's only a market for this kind of material because there are lookers. That you are contributing to child sex abuse. And then I impose a significant sentence, and all of the additional restraints that are available in the law," she continued in an emotional riff. "I am imposing all of those constraints because I understand how significant, how damaging, how horrible this crime is."

Jackson noted that in addition to prison terms of many years for the crimes, she also requires "20, 30, 40 years of supervision" and that the offenders "can't use computers for decades."

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."