Dershowitz: Jackson Unprepared for Senate Confirmation Hearing

Longtime liberal and legal expert Alan Dershowitz, also a Harvard scholar, has concluded that Ketanji Jackson, Joe Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court based on her qualifications of being black and a woman, was unprepared for her Senate confirmation hearing this week.

Article by Bob Unruh from our news partners at WND News Center.

Responding to questions, Jackson stumbled several times over issues that are key to some of the biggest issues in the nation right now.

In an interview on “Just the News, Not Noise,” Dershowitz said, “She wasn’t as well prepared, for example, as the previous nominee Amy Coney Barrett, who knew her cases cold.”

He said he has concerns, too, about her record on free speech.

He told the podcast interview that he interacted with Jackson once when she was leading protests against other students’ choices of flags as part of Harvard’s Black Students Association in 1991.

He explained one student with Virginia ancestry had displayed a Confederate flag outside her dorm window. In response, another student posted a Nazi flag.

“The Black Students Association of which Judge Jackson was then a member tried to get both flags taken down,” Dershowitz explained. He said he disagreed with flying the flags but still defended the students’ right to do so.

Dershowitz said Congress should have asked Jackson about her views on the incident and free speech.

“I hope that she’s changed her views on that in the last 31 years and understands that some of the greatest threats to freedom of speech come from claims of equality on the other side or inequality on the other side,” he said. “I hope she will understand that you can’t have equality without having complete freedom of speech in the First Amendment.”

Her stumbles came on questions about the transgender issue, and abortion.

She refused, for example, to answer the question when Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., asked her for the definition of a “woman.”

“I’m not a biologist.”

Judge Jackson can’t even define what a woman is. pic.twitter.com/G6OKMYR3Iy

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) March 23, 2022

Then Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, asked Jackson about fetal viability, and she repeated that she was “not a biologist.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

Dershowitz charged that Jackson should have been expecting those questions.

Why not, he suggested, say, “‘I’m a woman. And people who were born with vaginas are women. But there are cases now where people change and transition. And so the definition of what is a woman, for legal purposes, is a little bit more fluid than it was when we were all growing up.’”

On the abortion issue, he suggested, “‘It’s a biological question. It’s a legal question. It’s a philosophical question. It’s a religious question. And when the case comes before me, I’ll do all the research and make a decision based on the context of the case.’”

Just the News also reported that Blackburn, after the Senate questioned Jackson, was left “stunned” that she was so unresponsive.

Parents want a Supreme Court justice “who is going to be able to defend the rights of every American — male or female — and they want somebody who is going to be there to protect the individual,” the senator said on a John Solomon Reports podcast. “And I was really quite stunned that she was not able to give me more concrete answers.”

“Blackburn recalled that Jackson said under Senate questioning that she ‘can’t talk about’ protecting the rights of the unborn and babies who survive botched abortions. ‘Well, of course she should have been able to talk about if she believes in life or not,’ Blackburn said,” the report explained.

Further, her acceptance of the racist Critical Race Theory raises concerns, Blackburn said.

“So that would indicate a bias that she has brought into her decision-making process. And when I talk to Tennesseeans, they want equal access to the courts, they want equal justice for all. And they don’t want to be before a jurist who is going to be biased in the way they look at the application of the law.”

Blackburn said Jackson clearly is an “activist,” and pointed out Jackson had released from prison “a murderer who had murdered a U.S. Marshal.”

Blackburn said it’s clear Jackson will be actively working to “push the boundaries farther to the left” since her home is “the progressive wing of the Democrat Party.”