Click Here to View Senator Cotton’s Remarks.

Press Release

In case you missed it – Today, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) delivered opening remarks at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to consider Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to serve on the United States Supreme Court.

A video of Senator Cotton’s remarks may be found here. His remarks as delivered are below.

I welcome Judge Jackson and her family, and I congratulate her on her nomination.

This is an important occasion. The Biden administration is waging war on the rule of law, the separation of powers, and the Constitution. The lawlessness of this administration highlights the importance of judges who faithfully apply the law. 

To understand the ongoing power-grab, let’s consider President Biden’s failed nominee to lead the Department of Justice’s ATF. The man he nominated can only be described as an anti-gun zealot. Thanks to the courage of some of my colleagues, that nominee was withdrawn. But it is disturbing that President Biden was ever willing to nominate someone who planned to shred the Second Amendment and ban virtually every modern hunting rifle in the United States. 

Just a few months ago, the Biden administration tried to twist the authority of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration—a relatively obscure agency designed to regulate things like ladder safety on construction sites—and use it as a weapon to force virtually every American to choose between getting vaccinated or losing their livelihood. Thankfully, the Supreme Court struck down that unlawful power grab.

Or look at our southern border, where Joe Biden and his Secretary of Homeland Security steadfastly refuse to enforce our laws. As a result, two million illegal aliens streamed across our borders just last year. 

And less than six months ago, the Attorney General of the United States—himself a former judge—ordered that federal prosecutors, the FBI, and even the National Security Division of the Department of Justice be mobilized against parents who dared question the entrenched teachers unions who are poisoning their children with the racist vitriol known as “critical race theory.”

As Justice Scalia was fond of saying, every banana republic has a Bill of Rights, but it’s nothing more than a parchment barrier without free and fair elections, without separated powers, without the rule of law, and without an independent judiciary to uphold it all.

Perhaps recognizing what Scalia meant, the progressive left is not just threatening the rights of Americans, but our very system of constitutional government.

Those on the left, including some of my colleagues here in the Senate—including on this committee—want to pack the Supreme Court. I would hope that anyone nominated to the Court would have no problem echoing the words of Justice Ginsburg and Justice Breyer. Both of these liberal lions have said that expanding the Supreme Court to achieve favored legal and political outcomes is a dangerous idea, and that the Court should have nine justices and no more. 

But for some, political outcomes on the Court are exactly their goal. The Democratic Leader, Senator Schumer stood, on the steps of the Supreme Court almost exactly two years ago and yelled that specific justices “have unleashed the whirlwind and . . . will pay the price,” and added, “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” The Chief Justice rightly condemned these words. Again, I hope any nominee to the Court would be comfortable condemning these words as well.

The Supreme Court is not the only constitutional limit on power that the left would like to destroy. The Associate Attorney General of the United States has said that she believes that every single American—every single American—and every single institution in this country are inherently racist, and that the very concepts of “the rule of law” or “equal justice for all” are actually “code words” for some kind of twisted, secret racism. 

These threats to the rule of law are not merely theoretical. We are witnessing a breakdown of society.

There are many Americans who no longer feel safe today. Parents are scared to walk down streets that used to be free from crime. In 2020, anarchists, rioters, and left-wing street militias raged across the country, and murders increased at the fastest rate in history. And in the first year of the Biden administration violent crime got even worse. It’s no coincidence that this violence came as localities and states pushed to defund the police and reduce the punishments for criminals. Career criminals are committing violent crimes and are going free, under the guise of a supposedly more “equitable” justice system. And liberal judges who have more sympathy for the victimizers than for the victims are a big part of the problem.

The Biden administration is committed to these soft-on-crime policies, like ending cash bail to create a “catch & release” system for violent criminals.

Progressive Soros prosecutors—who are supported by the Biden administration—have nullified entire sections of law to destroy our criminal justice system from within.

The consequences are obvious: Skyrocketing violent crime, emboldened gangs, and drug overdoses reaching numbers never before seen in American history.

If Judge Jackson is confirmed, her decisions will have a direct impact on the safety of the American people. So we’re going to look at her past decisions and her statements, because the best predictor of future performance is past performance.

That brings us to today. We’re asked to determine whether the president’s nominee to the Supreme Court is able and willing to meet these vital challenges.

I enjoyed meeting with Judge Jackson last week in my office. We had a good conversation, and over the next few days I will have many more questions.

Let’s be clear about this: The confirmation hearing is not a test of how well nominees can filibuster, or how many questions they can avoid answering. It’s true that there is a tradition of avoiding any stances on how one might rule in specific cases if confirmed, and there’s good reason for that. But that is not license to refuse to discuss one’s views the law, how one would go about conducting legal interpretation, or one’s philosophy as a judge. 

Judge Jackson isn’t nominated to be a district judge or a circuit judge this time around, so it is not enough to say that she will approach things with integrity and fairness and faithfully apply precedents set by higher courts. 

Just as you wouldn’t hire a teacher who refused to say anything about their teaching philosophy other than that they would “look at the curriculum and then appropriately teach the students,” it is not enough for you to say only that one would look at the facts and arguments in the case and fairly apply the law. That wouldn’t tell us anything about how one plans to do the job, how one interprets the law, how one understands our constitution.

It’s no secret that I voted against Judge Jackson’s nomination to the Circuit Court last year. But I want to give her the opportunity to show why I should vote for her this time. So I want to be clear about what would convince me to support any Supreme Court nominee:

I’m looking for a justice who will uphold the Constitution, not use it to invent new so-called “rights.”

I’m looking for a justice who understands that the Constitution means what it says, and does not mean what it doesn’t say. Someone who understands that it is not up to nine unaccountable, unelected politicians in black robes to decide some new, evolving meaning of the Constitution based on public opinion polling or the views of the legal elite.

I’m looking for a justice who realizes that a so-called “living constitution” really means that the constitution is dead. Instead, we should have an enduring constitution, as Justice Scalia contended.

I’m looking for a justice who understands that there is a process for updating the Constitution, and that process is by amending the Constitution. I will not support anyone who seeks to re-write the Constitution from the bench, rather than through our constitutional amendment process.

I’m looking for a justice who understands that nobody is above the law, and will not coddle criminals or put illegal aliens ahead of American citizens.

I’m looking for a justice who will protect the right to life of innocent infants, instead of caving to the abortion lobby, creating whole new swaths of law out of whole cloth.

I’m looking for a justice who will make decisions based on the law, not based on their personal experiences or preferences, not on empathy, not on desired political outcomes, but on the law and the constitution.

If Judge Jackson is confirmed, her job will be simple: Leave the legislating to Congress and to elected, accountable officeholders in our states and our municipalities, zealously protect the separation of powers, and don’t overturn laws unless they violate the Constitution.

I look forward to these hearings. Thank you very much.