Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson spent a good portion of the first day of her Supreme Court nomination hearings in the U.S. Senate defending her work as a defense lawyer.

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled the nominee about her time as a public defender, including her work defending prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. Senators also targeted sentences she handed down to people convicted on child pornography charges when she was a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

On this episode of our weekly legal news podcast, On The Merits, we talk to Bloomberg Law reporter Jordan Rubin about how the hearings have been going so far, why Republicans are choosing this line of attack, and whether there's anything the GOP might do to stop Judge Jackson from becoming Justice Jackson.

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