Republican Senator Susan Collins told The New York Times that she would vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.

       The Maine Republican, who is often considered a moderate met, with Ms Jackson twice and said the second meeting inspired enough confidence to vote for her.

       “I have decided to support the confirmation of Judge Jackson to be a member of the Supreme Court,” she told Carl Hulse of The Times, saying Ms Jackson would not be “bending the law to meet a personal preference.”

       Ms Collins’ vote comes after multiple Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee repeatedly grilled Ms Jackson about sentences she gave to people convicted of possessing child sex abuse images. But Ms Collins criticised senators for asking questions outside their jurisdiction.

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       “In recent years, senators on both sides of the aisle have gotten away from what I perceive to be the appropriate process for evaluating judicial nominees,” she said. “In my view, the role under the Constitution assigned to the Senate is to look at the credentials, experience and qualifications of the nominee. It is not to assess whether a nominee reflects the individual ideology of a senator or would vote exactly as an individual senator would want.”

       Ms Collins voted to confirm Ms Jackson to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2021, along with Republican Sens Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. But she had criticised Mr Biden for announcing that he would nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court, which she called “clumsy at best.”

       Democrats spent millions of dollars in 2020 attempting to beat Ms Collins in Maine after she voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 after he had vehemently denied allegations of sexual assault and she delivered a fiery speech defending her decision.

       But she won the state overwhelmingly despite President Joe Biden winning the state and she voted against confirming former president Donald Trump’s nominee Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just weeks before the election. Ms Collins also voted to confirm both of former president Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

       Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin said on Tuesday that he had been quietly lobbying Republican Senators to vote to confirm Ms Jackson.

       “There are those within the Republican Party I know from speaking to them who understand the historic significance of this nomination, and want to make sure that Mr Lincoln’s party, the Grand Old Party, is on board,” he said. “I think that can happen. We’re going to work toward that end.”