Retired conservative judge says Republicans should vote for Biden's Supreme Court nominee 'out of political calculation' if they can't do so 'out of political magnanimity'

• A prominent retired conservative judged endorsed Biden's Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
• Judge J. Michael Luttig also urged Republicans to vote for her confirmation.

A retired conservative federal judge on Monday endorsed President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and urged Senate Republicans to vote to confirm her.

In a statement to CNN, Judge J. Michael Luttig, a high-profile conservative legal figure, emphatically praised Jackson, saying she's "eminently qualified" to serve on the nation's highest court.

"Indeed, she is as highly credentialed and experienced in the law as any nominee in history, having graduated from the Harvard Law School with honors, clerked at the Supreme Court, and served as a Federal Judge for almost a decade," Luttig said.

Biden on Friday nominated Jackson for a Supreme Court seat that will be left open by Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, who plans to retire this summer. Jackson will soon begin her confirmation process in the Senate, where she only needs a simple-majority vote to get confirmed. It's unclear whether she'll earn Republican support, but Democrats can advance her nomination as long as all 50 senators in the party are on board and Vice President Kamala Harris casts the tiebreaking vote. So far, no Republicans have publicly revealed whether they plan to vote for Jackson's confirmation.

Luttig, in his statement, directly called on Republicans to vote in favor of Jackson.

"Republicans should vote to confirm Judge Jackson out of political calculation, even if they cannot bring themselves to confirm her out of political magnanimity, and then proudly take the deserved credit for their part in elevating the first black female jurist to the Supreme Court of the United States," he said, per CNN.

Luttig also said that Republicans "prematurely judged" Biden's pick. When the president announced last month that he would fulfill his 2020 campaign pledge and nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, some Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Roger Wicker of Mississippi, criticized his decision.

"The President knew at the time that there were any number of highly qualified black women on the lower federal courts from among whom he could choose -- including Judge Jackson -- and Republicans should have known that the President would nominate one of those supremely qualified black women to succeed Justice Breyer," Luttig said in his statement to CNN.

Luttig also mentioned the high court's 6-3 conservative tilt, cemented by President Donald Trump, saying: "The Republicans now have the comfortable majority on the Court that they have sought for four decades."

Luttig previously served on the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and was also considered for the Supreme Court during the George W. Bush administration. His endorsement for Jackson comes after he recently shared how helping then-Vice President Mike Pence resist pressure to overturn the 2020 election was the "the highest honor" of his life.

Several Trump advisors and allies had tried to persuade Pence to challenge the election as Congress met to certify the results on January 6, 2021. The day before the Capitol riot, Luttig tweeted a lengthy legal analysis explaining how the vice president has no constitutional authority to alter the Electoral College votes. Pence used Luttig's tweets in his open letter to explain why he wouldn't overturn the election.