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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, in my 8 years as Governor, I had the opportunity to appoint more than 400 Floridians to the bench. I interviewed thousands of applicants for these seats, and my standards in each of those interviews were the same. I asked them if they understood that they intended to be part of the judiciary and not part of the legislature. And I asked them if they intended to interpret the law and enforce the law but not make new laws. If they couldn't convince me that they believed that was their duty as a member of the judicial branch, then I wouldn't appoint them.

We need qualified jurists committed to fairly and accurately interpreting our Constitution and our laws as they are written, not activist judges who will rewrite the laws according to their own policy preferences.

Now, I have had the chance to meet with Judge Jackson. We had a nice conversation, and she seems like a nice person. But I have very serious concerns about her record as a Federal judge, which includes numerous instances of the type of judicial activism that we cannot and should not tolerate from the Federal judiciary.

The fact is that Judge Jackson has written only two appellate opinions in her current position. So we have no evidence of how she will approach serious constitutional issues as an appellate judge. And she has refused to disclose how she would interpret the Constitution as a Supreme Court Justice, despite being repeatedly and directly asked by Senators on the Judiciary Committee.

And while serving as a district court judge, she had a high rate of being reversed on appeal for applying the wrong legal standards, exceeding her authority, or simply ignoring clear law in her decisions.

And a peek into her history shows an alarming pattern of being weak on sex offenders, including easier sentences in child pornography cases. Judge Jackson imposed sentences that were 47 percent shorter than the national average in cases of child pornography distribution, and 57 percent shorter than the national average in cases of child pornography possession. She has even apologized from the bench when issuing such sentences--not to the victims of those heinous crimes. Of course, they never got an apology. She apologized to the offenders for the ``anguish'' the sentences for their horrific crimes would cause them.

What about the anguish of their victims--innocent children?

These are individuals who harm children. They don't deserve easy sentences or our sympathies.

And this sympathy for child predators has consequences. We recently learned that a child rapist, someone to whom Judge Jackson gave a very lenient sentence, sexually abused another victim after his light sentence. Had Judge Jackson given him the sentence he deserved and the one that the prosecution recommended, he would have been in prison, not out in the streets.

These are crimes that Judge Jackson has the power to prevent, but she has chosen every time to give these gross criminals easier sentences. That is why I have joined Senator Hawley to introduce the Protect Act, which protects children from sexual exploitation by enhancing the penalties for possessing child pornography and preventing judges from sentencing offenders below Federal guidelines. Our communities must be protected from sick individuals who exploit and victimize children, and also from liberal activist judges who abuse their sentencing guidelines to let offenders off the hook. Federal sentencing guidelines for these heinous crimes are critical, and we must ensure guidelines are strictly enforced. I hope the Senate quickly passes this good bill.

We can't have a soft-on-crime Justice on the Supreme Court, and we can't have activist judges in the highest Court in the land.

I also don't think it is too much for the nominee to the highest Court in the land to be able to say what a woman is or to take a stand against partisan Court packing, which even liberal Justices like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer have done. We have the right to be concerned and demand answers on behalf of the American people. I think our country deserves better.

That is why I can't support the nomination of Judge Jackson to the Supreme Court. I am committed to giving the American people qualified judges who understand their role in government and who apply the law as it is written, not as they want it to be. It is a simple standard, and it is one that Floridians expect. Unfortunately, based on my best assessment of her record on the bench, that is unfortunately not the case with Judge Jackson.

The Democratic Party needs to understand that the Supreme Court is not just another institution to infiltrate with their leftist ideology. I have no hope that they will, but, until they do, I will continue fighting to uphold the Constitution and ensure that there remains a separation of powers between branches of Government, and that judges who are appointed to the bench understand that they are there to interpret the law, not to make the law.

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