In the wake of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings to the U.S. Supreme Court, John Heilemann talks with Neal Katyal and Robin Lenhardt, two of the sharpest legal minds of their generation and longtime friends of Jackson. Katyal and Lenhardt – who share a formative bond with Jackson as members of the elite club of former clerks to retiring Justice Stephen Breyer – discuss her biography and character, as well as the role that she could play in being a consensus builder on one of the most conservative Supreme Courts in U.S history. Tune in to the full episode to hear more about Jackson’s historic status as the first Black woman ever chosen to sit on the high court; how the culture-war preening of a handful of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee turned the proceedings into something more venal and ugly than mere Kabuki; and the degree to which the hearings will further undermine public confidence in the court’s distance from petty partisanship and naked ideological warfare.
