Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearings live updates: Outside witnesses on final day

(WASHINGTON) — Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, has completed two full days of questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee: 13 hours on Tuesday and 10.5 hours on Wednesday.

Thursday will mark the final day of the four-day confirmation hearing as the committee hears from outside legal experts, civil rights leaders and the American Bar Association.

Here is how the news is developing Thursday. Check back for updates:

Mar 24, 8:43 am
What to expect on the final day of hearings

Judge Jackson, the nation’s first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court, has cleared 19 hours of grueling questioning at the Senate Judiciary Committee and appears headed toward confirmation as a justice with support from all Democrats and a small number of Republicans.

“In my capacity as a justice, I would do what I’ve done for the past decade,” Jackson told the committee on her third day of testimony, “which is to rule from a position of neutrality, to look carefully at the facts and … to render rulings that I believe and that I hope that people would have confidence in.”

The historic hearings resume at 9 a.m. and will wrap for the week after the committee hears from representatives from the American Bar Association — which has given its highest rating to Jackson — and outside witnesses called by Democrats and Republicans on the committee. Senators have five-minute rounds for questions Thursday.

Judiciary Committee Democrats have invited Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus; Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Jackson’s former classmate; Risa Goluboff, the first woman to serve as dean of University of Virginia Law School; Richard Rosenthal, an appellate attorney and longtime friend to Jackson; and Capt. Frederick Thomas, president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives.

As several Republicans on the committee have painted Jackson as “soft on crime,” the GOP has called for their panel Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall; Jennifer Mascott, an assistant law professor at George Mason University; Eleanor McCullen, an anti-abortion rights activist; Keisha Russell of First Liberty; and Alessandro Serano, an activist against human trafficking.