Historic hearing takes turn into familiar territory on race and crime, experts say

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearings may have been historic, in that she is the first Black woman nominated for the Supreme Court. 

But they have not been without precedent, at least with regard to questions on crime and race that she faced from some Republican senators, such as Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who have tried to portray her as "soft on crime." 

Civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill, who is president and director-counsel emeritus of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, tweeted Tuesday that listening to Cotton question Jackson reminded her of Arkansas Sen. John McClellan, who tried to derail Thurgood Marshall's nomination to the Supreme Court by seizing on riots in the country and playing on Americans' fears about crime during his 1967 confirmation hearing. Marshall was the nation's first Black Supreme Court justice.