3 Republican Senators Vote ‘Yes,’ Joining Democrats

The Senate on Thursday confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, making her the first Black woman to be elevated to the pinnacle of the judicial branch in what her supporters hailed as a needed step toward bringing new diversity and life experience to the court.

Overcoming a concerted effort by conservative Republicans to derail her nomination, Judge Jackson was confirmed on a 53-to-47 vote, with three Republicans joining all 50 members of the Democratic caucus in backing her. The vote was a rejection of Republican attempts to paint her as a liberal extremist who has coddled criminals. Dismissing those portrayals as distorted and offensive, Judge Jackson’s backers saw the confirmation as an uplifting occasion, one where a representative of a group often pushed into the background instead moved to the forefront.

The vote put her in line to replace Justice Stephen G. Breyer when he retires at the end of the court’s session this summer.

“Even in the darkest times, there are bright lights,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said on the Senate floor. “Today is one of the brightest lights. Let us hope it’s a metaphor, an indication of many bright lights to come.”

He added, “How many millions of kids in generations past could have benefited from such a role model?” At the Capitol, the galleries to witness the historic vote, closed for much of the pandemic, were full of supporters. The chamber erupted in cheers, with senators, staff and visitors all jumping up for a lengthy standing ovation, after the vote was announced.

Not everyone shared in the joy of the day. As applause echoed from the marbled walls, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, turned his back and slowly walked out, as did most of the few Republicans remaining on the floor, leaving half of the chamber empty as the other half celebrated in a stark reflection of the partisan divide.

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“When it came to one of the most consequential decisions a president can make, a lifetime appointment to our highest court, the Biden administration let the radicals run the show,” Mr. McConnell had said earlier, making one last argument against the judge, whose nomination he framed as an example of extremists taking control of the Democratic Party. “The far left got the reckless inflationary spending they wanted. The far left has gotten the insecure border they wanted. And today, the far left will get the Supreme Court justice they wanted.”

Three Republicans — Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah — crossed party lines to support Judge Jackson, lending a modicum of bipartisanship to an otherwise bitterly polarized process.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to hold the position and one of just 11 Black senators in American history, presided over the vote — one historic figure presiding over the elevation of another — as senators stated their positions from their desks in a reflection of the magnitude of the moment. More than a dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Representatives Hakeem Jeffries of New York and Joyce Beatty of Ohio, clustered on the Senate floor to mark the occasion.

At the White House, Mr. Biden and Judge Jackson watched the vote together from the Roosevelt Room. Officials said the two would appear at an event on Friday to mark Judge Jackson’s confirmation, though she will not be sworn in for months.

“I’m overjoyed, deeply moved,” Ms. Harris told reporters after the vote. “There’s so much about what’s happening in the world now that is presenting some of the worst of this moment and human behaviors. And then we have a moment like this.”

The last three justices to join the Supreme Court did so while its term was already underway, causing them to have to scramble to get up to speed. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will face the opposite problem: an extended stretch in which she will be in an unusual twilight space as a justice in waiting.

Her status is the consequence of Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s early and conditional announcement of his retirement and of quick action by Senate Democrats wary of taking risks in confirming his successor given the closely divided chamber.

The last member of the court to announce his retirement, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, did so on June 27, 2018, which was the last day of the term. He said he would step down the next month, regardless of whether his replacement was confirmed. As it happened, his successor, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh did not take his seat until Oct. 6 of that year, by which time the next term was underway.

Justice Breyer announced his own plans on Jan. 27. “I intend this decision to take effect,” he wrote, “when the court rises for the summer recess this year (typically late June or early July) assuming that by then my successor has been nominated and confirmed.”

That means Judge Jackson, who stopped participating in the appeals court’s work when she was nominated, will be an interested bystander as the Supreme Court issues its big decisions in the coming months, including ones on abortion and guns. She will have time to hire law clerks and study the next term’s docket.

But she will not take the required judicial oath and formally join the Supreme Court until Justice Breyer’s work is done.

According to the Supreme Court’s website, there have been a handful of instances in which new justices were confirmed before retiring ones completed their service. But the months that Judge Jackson will spend on the sidelines appear to set a record.

She will not take the bench until the court returns from its summer break in October, but she will presumably be rested and well prepared for the next term, which will include major cases on affirmative action, voting and gay rights.

However collegial Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson may be, whatever her reputation as a “consensus builder” and whether her voting record will be slightly to the right or left of Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s, the court’s lopsided conservative majority will remain in charge. Judge Jackson will most likely find herself, as he has, in dissent in the court’s major cases on highly charged social questions.

Indeed, in an institution that prizes seniority, the court’s three-member liberal wing is apt to lose power.

Justice Breyer will stay on the court through the end of the current term, in late June or early July. By summer, he will probably write or join dissents from majority opinions undermining or eliminating the right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade, expanding Second Amendment protections for carrying guns in public and limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to address climate change.

There is no reason to think that Justice Jackson will have any more ability to halt the court’s rightward march in the marquee cases the court will hear after the justices return from their summer break and she takes the bench.

To the contrary, she said at her confirmation hearing that she planned to recuse herself from one of next term’s blockbusters, a challenge to Harvard’s race-conscious admissions program, given her services on one of the university’s governing boards.

But she is not expected to disqualify herself from a companion case, about the admissions program at the University of North Carolina, which presents somewhat broader questions and will now become the main attraction.

There is no direct evidence from Judge Jackson’s judicial record about how she is likely to approach the case. But her supporters and opponents alike are confident that she will vote to uphold programs in which colleges and universities take account of race as one factor among many in admissions decisions.

The court’s more conservative members, on the other hand, appear to be ready to say that the Constitution and a federal law forbid such programs. That would represent a sharp break from more than four decades of precedents.

Judge Jackson will also participate in the latest clash between claims of religious freedom and gay rights, this time in a case about a web designer who objects to providing services for same-sex weddings. The court considered a similar dispute in 2018 in a case about a Colorado baker, but Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s muddled and limited majority opinion did not resolve the basic issue.

Justice Kennedy retired later that year, and he was replaced by the more conservative Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. The court, which has been exceptionally receptive to cases brought by religious groups and individuals, is likely to issue a ruling favoring the web designer.

Judge Jackson has no judicial track record in this area, either, but it would be a surprise if she joined the court’s conservatives.

In the third major case already on the court’s docket for its next term, the justices will consider the role race may play in drawing voting maps. The court may have tipped its hand in February, when it temporarily reinstated an Alabama congressional map that a lower court had said diluted the power of Black voters, suggesting that the court was poised to become more skeptical of challenges to maps based on claims of race discrimination.

The court will hear an appeal in the same case soon after Justice Jackson arrives. But the court’s order in February indicated that there may already be five votes to continue one of the signature projects of the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., that of limiting the force of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In earlier decisions, the Supreme Court effectively gutted Section 5 of the law, which had required federal approval of changes to state and local voting laws in parts of the country with a history of racial discrimination, and cut back on Section 2 of the law, limiting the ability of minority groups to challenge voting restrictions.

The Alabama case also concerns Section 2, but in the context of redistricting. The court’s liberals were in dissent when the court issued its provisional order in February, and they are likely to be in the same position when the court rules on the merits of the case.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to hold the position and one of just 11 Black senators in American history, presided over the vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court — one historic figure presiding over the elevation of another.

But no Black woman had the opportunity to vote for the barrier-breaking nominee: None is currently a member of the 100-person chamber, which includes three Black men.

In the early stages of Judge Jackson’s confirmation process, Democrats and White House officials had worried that she could be the first nominee in history to be confirmed with a tiebreaking vote by a vice president, if Republicans united against her. But in the end, Ms. Harris’s vote was not needed to break a tie in the evenly divided Senate because three Republicans — Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — supported the judge.

Still, her presence was striking in a chamber that is still mostly white and male.

Of the 100 senators, only 11 lawmakers identify as either Hispanic American, Asian American or Black in a Congress that is the most racially and ethnically diverse in history.

The three Black men who serve in the Senate — Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey, Tim Scott of South Carolina and Raphael Warnock of Georgia — cast votes. Mr. Booker and Mr. Warnock, both Democrats, spoke of their joy they felt in supporting Judge Jackson’s nomination.

Mr. Scott, a Republican, said he would oppose her based on her judicial philosophy, though he acknowledged the historic nature of her confirmation.

Before the vote, more than two dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus filed into the chamber to listen to the final speeches and watch the proceedings.

ATLANTA — Black women in law from around the country celebrated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation to the Supreme Court on Thursday, with many saying they felt proud and inspired by her accomplishment.

Nia Jolly, a second-year law student at the University of Louisville, who was recently elected the first Black female president of her student bar association, said she was thrilled for Judge Jackson and especially touched by her “resilience and tenacity.”

“Although Judge Jackson was put through the wringer, she came out successfully on the other side,” Ms. Jolly said. “This is a great day for Black women in the law and encouraging for Black women trying to make progress everywhere.”

Stephanie Goggans, a second-year law student at Cleveland State University and an intern for Judge Emanuella Groves, an appellate judge in Ohio, said she felt empowered by Judge Jackson’s success.

“I’m crying happy tears because for the first time, I can look at the highest court in the country — a country I would give my life for — and see a face that looks like mine,” said Ms. Goggans, 36.

Zenell Brown, a lawyer and court administrator for the Wayne County Third Circuit Court in Michigan, where she works with 58 judges, said before the vote on Thursday that Ms. Jackson’s confirmation would bring both pride and a sigh of relief after a process that had felt like an assault on her character.

Since February, when President Biden announced his nomination of Judge Jackson, Ms. Brown has been following the process closely. Each night of the hearings, she watched clips and read up on the day’s news, talking to friends and family and posting her thoughts on social media.

Her mother-in-law, who is in her 80s, was particularly excited because she never imagined a Black woman would be on the court in her lifetime, Ms. Brown said. Her youngest daughter, who is 30, has been joking that Judge Jackson must be family because they share a last name.

“We aren’t related, but it’s an example that we are all just wanting to get a piece of this exciting moment,” Ms. Brown said. “We have a sense of ‘this is a part of me,’ and I’m so proud.”

Judge Groves said that Ms. Jackson’s confirmation gave her hope for the current and future generations of Black lawyers, including her daughter who works in civil rights law and her son-in-law who is a voter protection lawyer.

Still, for Judge Groves, 63, the confirmation hearings were exciting but also sobering as she thought about the questioning Ms. Jackson had faced.

“The manner of the questioning of some senators was not a quest to ensure a qualified jurist was selected who would interpret the constitution fairly, but was a demonstration of their desire to select a judge that would interpret the law the way they want,” she said. “This desire was greater than being a part of history as the first Black female jurist was ushered onto the Supreme Court.”

Erin McNeil Young, a civil litigation lawyer in North Carolina, said that there were moments in the confirmation hearings that she found triggering, particularly as senators questioned Judge Jackson’s qualifications.

Yet what she found most stirring from the process was seeing the judge’s parents in the gallery in support of their daughter.

“Her hardworking, Black, loving parents, who grew up through segregation, were sitting there watching,” Ms. Young said. “And that they were both able to witness this moment after what they lived through just a generation ago stands out to me most.”

“That was beautiful to see,” Ms. Young added, noting that Judge Jackson, in that moment, “could have been any number of my friends with their moms and dads proudly sitting there.”

“I’m so excited,” she said after the judge’s confirmation. “I feel like the world is saved because that’s what Black women do.”

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, used his floor time before the votes on Thursday to argue against confirming Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, denouncing calls by some progressives to add justices to the Supreme Court.

“I needed to hear Judge Jackson denounce court-packing,” Mr. McConnell said, noting that Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg had both publicly said that they thought the court should remain at nine members.

Mr. McConnell continued: “Surely President Biden can find himself an institutionalist in their mold. But alas, Judge Jackson was the court-packers’ favorite pick for the vacancy, and she refused to follow the Ginsburg-Breyer model. She signaled the opposite. She said she’d be thrilled to be one of however many — one of however many.”

Judge Jackson made that comment on the second day of her confirmation hearings last month in declining to take a position on the question. The context, which Mr. McConnell omitted, was that she pointed out that Congress, not the judiciary, decides how many seats should be on the Supreme Court.

“I feel so strongly about ensuring that judges remain out of political debates. I don’t think it’s appropriate for me as a nominee to comment on a political matter that is in the province of Congress,” she said, adding: “I would be thrilled to be one of however many Congress thought it appropriate to put on the court.”

She also noted that Justice Amy Coney Barrett had similarly evaded answering the question during her confirmation hearing in 2020, citing the same rationale.

Nevertheless, several other Republican senators who are not expected to make floor arguments on Thursday — like Richard M. Burr of North Carolina — have also justified their decision to vote against her by raising alarms about her demurral when asked whether she would personally support expanding, or “packing,” the Supreme Court.

Congress changed the number of seats on the court on several occasions in the 19th century, but it has remained at nine in the modern era. In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed expanding the court when an aging bloc of conservatives kept striking down parts of the New Deal, but that plan failed.

The debate has intensified in recent years, as Republican, using hardball maneuvers, achieved a six-to-three conservative majority on the court — even though their party has lost the popular vote for the presidency in seven of the last eight elections.

In 2016, Mr. McConnell, then the Senate majority leader, refused to give a hearing to President Barack Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick B. Garland, leaving Donald J. Trump to fill the vacancy after he took office. In the last days of the Trump administration, Republicans sprinted to confirm Justice Barrett days before the president lost the 2020 election and entrenched a six-to-three conservative majority on the court.

With conservative judges appearing firmly in control of the law for the next generation, some progressives urged Democrats to add seats to the court so that President Biden could appoint a flurry of new justices, tilting back its ideological balance.

As a matter of political reality, however, those proposals appear dead. Not only could Senate Republicans defeat such legislation by using the filibuster, it also lacks the support of a simple majority because some Democrats oppose it.

Late in the 2020 campaign, Mr. Biden avoided taking a stand on the issue by saying he would instead appoint a bipartisan commission to study it.

The panel examined a number of potential changes — including proposals like imposing staggered term limits so that a seat opens every two years rather than randomly — and unanimously produced a 288-page report. But it was sharply divided on the question of expansion and also did not take a stand on it.

Dozens of members of the Congressional Black Caucus gathered in the Capitol’s Rayburn Room on Wednesday to pose for a photo, many of them holding T-shirts that read “Black Women Are Supreme.”

The caucus, which began more than 50 years ago, was celebrating the vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.

“It says to us, there’s hope that other Black women and minorities will be able to follow in her footsteps,” said Representative Joyce Beatty, Democrat of Ohio and the chairwoman of the caucus. “She’s breaking, shattering, tearing down those glass ceilings.”

Long the core of Black political power in Washington, the caucus has been shaped by civil rights leaders. Today, it counts 56 members of Congress and two delegates as members. They represent 27 states, as well as Washington and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

While every member of the caucus is a Democrat, the caucus’s diversity in background, age and ideology were on full display at the gathering on Wednesday. There was Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, the most senior member of Congress who is Black, alongside younger members, like Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota.

Despite differences within the caucus on some issues, its members have banded together in support of Judge Jackson.

“It’s important for us to say thank you because she’s getting ready to make a lifetime commitment of service, a lifetime commitment to the rule of law,” Ms. Beatty said.

Others came to Judge Jackson’s defense during her confirmation hearings, during which Republicans fired off an array of political attacks.

In a powerful moment last month near the end of the hearings, Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey and the only Black lawmaker on the Senate Judiciary Committee, moved Judge Jackson to tears as he reminded her of the significance of her bid to sit on the Supreme Court.

“You are my star. You are my harbinger of hope,” he said. “I’m not going to let my joy be stolen because I know, you and I? We appreciate something that we get that a lot of my colleagues don’t.”

Ms. Beatty said that Judge Jackson’s composed response to questions from Republicans showed that she had the “judicial temperament” needed to sit on the bench.

“I just think she brings great value, culture, a background that is so unique and so stellar,” Ms. Beatty said, noting Judge Jackson’s work as a public defender. “Someone who’s been confirmed three times for some of the highest courts that you can serve on, having the experience of clerking for Judge Breyer whose very seat that she’s filling — that within itself should give America comfort that she’s walking in the shoes of someone who has performed well.”

With three Republicans supporting her, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation parallels that of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch in terms of bipartisan support.

Justice Gorsuch, quickly nominated in 2017 by President Donald J. Trump, was a conservative judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, in Denver, where he had sat for more than a decade and had written scores of opinions. A former lawyer in the Justice Department during the George W. Bush administration, he had the distinguished background and high-level clerkships typical of Supreme Court nominees who draw wide backing.

But Justice Gorsuch was filling the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the conservative icon who died in February 2016 at a Texas hunting lodge during a weekend trip. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, then the majority leader, refused to let President Barack Obama fill the vacancy with Judge Merrick B. Garland. The extreme tactic left the seat open for the better part of a year, allowing Mr. Trump to fill it a few weeks after he took office in January 2017.

The sequence of events infuriated Democrats; they were in no mood to support any Trump nominee, no matter how qualified he might be. Justice Gorsuch sought to overcome the resistance, but he could not.

Democrats tried a filibuster of Judge Gorsuch and were successful in denying him the 60 votes needed to advance. But Mr. McConnell led Senate Republicans in changing the rules governing the filibuster to allow debate on Supreme Court justices to be cut off with a simple majority. Democrats had already lowered the threshold for lower court judges in 2013, when Mr. McConnell was leading a Republican blockade against them.

The change cleared the way for Justice Gorsuch and has been a significant factor in making Supreme Court fights more partisan by allowing nominees to be confirmed on a majority vote.

In the end, only three Democrats from conservative states — Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana — joined Republicans in backing Justice Gorsuch, in a 54-45 vote. Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, a Democrat from Justice Gorsuch’s home state, voted against the filibuster but opposed the nomination.

When the next vacancy occurred in 2018, Mr. Trump reached out to the three Democrats to consult on the nomination before he put forward Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh. In the end, Mr. Manchin was the only Democrat to support Justice Kavanaugh after he was accused of sexual assault.

Ms. Heitkamp and Mr. Donnelly both lost their seats in the 2018 midterm elections, and their votes against Justice Kavanaugh — as well as the Republican backlash to his explosive confirmation hearings — were considered factors in the defeats.

Of the three Republicans backing Judge Jackson, only Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is up for re-election this year. Senator Susan Collins of Maine was re-elected in 2020, and Senator Mitt Romney’s term will be up in 2024.

The increasing partisanship surrounding Supreme Court confirmations is prompting difficult questions about the handling of future nominees and whether the pick of a president of one party could ever win approval in a Senate controlled by the other.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader who blocked President Barack Obama’s nominee for almost a year in 2016, refused to say on Tuesday whether he would allow consideration of a Supreme Court pick by President Biden in 2023 if he were the majority leader. And that is not even an election year.

“I’m not going to go forward with any prediction on what our strategy might be should we become a majority,” Mr. McConnell said.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, said on Monday that the panel would not have taken up the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson if Republicans had been in control because of her perceived liberal leanings.

“When we are in charge, then we’ll talk about judges differently,” he warned Democrats.

A Republican-led Judiciary Committee could bottle up a Biden nominee on its own. All 11 Republicans on the panel voted on Monday against the nomination of Judge Jackson, forcing Democrats to force it out of committee with a floor vote, a maneuver that they would have been unlikely to pull off had they been in the minority.

In the past, Democratic leaders of the committee have been willing to send Supreme Court nominees chosen by Republican presidents to the floor without a recommendation, or with a negative one, to at least allow them to receive a full Senate vote. But Judge Jackson’s experience shows that Republicans might not extend the same treatment to a Democrat’s nominee.

The intense polarization is an inevitable result of the tit-for-tat that the parties have engaged in over judicial nominees for decades, reaching the point where Supreme Court nominees might be assured of only consideration and approval when the president’s party controls the Senate.

The inability to advance nominees could easily extend to the lower courts as well. Mr. Obama had to greatly reduce efforts to seat federal district court and appellate judges once Republicans won the Senate in 2014, and Republicans would no doubt slow down Mr. Biden if they took power.

It is a huge shift from decades of Senate tradition, when members of both parties routinely voted for Supreme Court nominations by the president of the other party.

As recently as 2009, Justice Sonia Sotomayor received nine Republican votes; in 2010, Justice Elana Kagan received the support of five Republicans.

Then, in 2016, Judge Merrick B. Garland did not even receive a hearing as an Obama Supreme Court nominee sent to a Republican-controlled Senate. The next three nominees — Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — have all been narrowly confirmed, with Justice Gorsuch receiving three Democratic votes, Justice Kavanaugh one and Justice Barrett none. Judge Jackson is expected to win three Republican votes.

Though it was touch-and-go in rounding up that many, it should be considered significant given the current climate.

In any event, a Republican-controlled Senate would force the Biden administration to send judicial nominees at all levels who would be much more acceptable to the G.O.P., potentially dropping or moderating its emphasis on nominating civil rights lawyers and former public defenders such as Judge Jackson. Most Republicans have opposed nearly all of them.

To have a chance to fill another Supreme Court vacancy, Mr. Biden would have to identify a candidate who could draw significant Republican support, which could prove a tall order. Judge Garland was chosen in 2016 specifically because Republicans had previously said they could support him or a nominee like him.

But when it came time to do so, and Republicans held the Judiciary Committee gavel, Judge Garland — the last Supreme Court nominee picked by a president whose party did not control the Senate — went nowhere.

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said he expected Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to become the “furthest left of any justice to have ever served on the Supreme Court.”

Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, claimed that “the dark money leftist groups” supporting Judge Jackson were “trying to push this agenda of woke education.”

And Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, again expressed his outrage, that Judge J. Michelle Childs, whom he knows personally, did not end up as President Biden’s choice to serve on the nation’s highest court.

In the hours before the Senate voted to confirm Judge Jackson to become the first Black woman to be elevated to the pinnacle of the judicial branch, the Republican senators who worked the hardest at her confirmation hearings to derail her nomination gave some of their misleading objections one last airing at a news conference in the Capitol.

Their attacks stood in contrast to the euphoria that gripped Democrats.

“Even in the darkest times, there are bright lights,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said on the Senate floor. “Today is one of the brightest lights.”

Not so for Mr. Cruz.

“She is an extreme outlier on the question of crime,” Mr. Cruz told reporters, reiterating the right-wing attack that Judge Jackson had been lenient in her sentencing of criminal defendants, and in particular, sex offenders.

Multiple news organizations fact-checked that line of attack and found it to be misleading, noting that Judge Jackson had generally followed common judicial sentencing practices and recommended penalties supported unanimously by a bipartisan federal commission.

Mr. Graham, once a close friend of Mr. Biden’s, claimed that in choosing Judge Jackson, the president “wanted to satisfy the most radical elements of the Democratic Party.” He said that “her sentencing methodology has no deterrence when it comes to child pornography, in my view.”

Ms. Blackburn, seeking to elevate some of the culture wars that energize the Republican base, noted that Judge Jackson’s refusal to define the word “woman” at her confirmation hearing was driven by the progressive groups supporting her. “They’re trying to erase ‘woman,’” she said.

Still, the senators tried to draw their own red line when it came to dangerous attacks that sought to frame Judge Jackson, or her supporters, as extremists.

Asked whether he agreed with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who called the three Republicans who said they would support Judge Jackson’s nomination “pro-pedophile,” Mr. Cruz demurred.

“No,” he said. “I think that’s silly.”

While Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, did not speak on the Senate floor on Thursday about the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, he held a news conference nearby at which he painted her as having “a particular pattern of leniency for sex offenders” convicted of possessing images of child sexual abuse.

“Judge Jackson from the bench would give speeches where she would acknowledge this is not a victimless crime,” Mr. Cruz said. “These little children — 11, 10, 8, sometimes toddlers or even younger — the horrible assaults that they’re videoed undergoing will stay with them forever. Her speeches were powerful. And then over and over and over again, she would give them a slap on the wrist, the defendant, and sentence them to very, very low sentences.”

As a trial judge, Judge Jackson consistently imposed lower sentences than sentencing guidelines called for in a handful of cases that came before her involving that crime. At her hearing, Mr. Cruz joined Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, in using that fact to insinuate that she was suspiciously lenient about the sexual abuse of children. (This line of attack resonates with QAnon, the fringe pro-Trump conspiracy theory smearing prominent Democrats as pedophiles.)

But Judge Jackson’s sentencing pattern corresponds to a generally recognized problem with the sentencing guidelines for the crime of possessing images of child sex abuse. Indeed, across the country, judges sentenced 59 percent of such offenders to terms below the guideline range in 2019, according to a 2021 report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Here’s a brief explanation for why that is happening.

Congress enshrined the sentencing guidelines system in a 1984 law, the Sentence Reform Act. The idea was to reduce disparities among sentences imposed by different judges, so that people who commit the same offense are treated the same.

To calibrate sentences that distinguish between lesser and worse offenders, the guidelines use a points system based on the details of a defendant’s conduct. During the sentencing phase of a trial, judges decide how many points a defendant has amassed, and that calculation corresponds to a recommended range.

To establish those guidelines, Congress created the Sentencing Commission. It is a bipartisan body that studies criminal justice data, holds hearings and then comes up with the numbers. The ranges were initially mandatory, but a Supreme Court ruling in 2005 made them merely advisory — freeing judges to impose harsher or more lenient sentences.

But the guidelines for possession of images of child sex abuse are different. Rather than letting the commission set them, Congress established them itself in a 2003 law. Thus, the commission cannot revise them in light of changing circumstances — which is the source of the problem.

The 2003 law sought to distinguish between casual and more serious offenders — those who sought such images only a few times compared with those who spent years systematically adding to their collections — by pegging ranges to the volume of images possessed, with a scale that starts at fewer than 10 and tops out at more than 600.

But this range was based on how offenders used to obtain such materials: the mail. Today, such images are shared over the internet, where someone can download an archive of thousands of such images with a single click. As a result, the guidelines are obsolete and no longer distinguish among different types of offenders.

Because those guidelines are no longer mandatory, many judges have been sentencing defendants well below the recommendations — including several Trump appointees whom Judge Jackson’s critics voted to confirm to higher posts.

The Sentencing Commission has asked Congress to revoke or amend the 2003 law. As a matter of political reality, this is unlikely. Few lawmakers want to cast a vote that a challenger could use to smear them as strangely friendly to the sexual abuse of children.