Topic: Constitutionality

Senator Ted Cruz questioned Judge Jackson on a note she wrote for the Harvard Law Review regarding the restraint of released sex offenders. In the note, Jackson argued that certain sex offender statutes, such as registration and DNA testing, should be viewed as "punitive" and therefore potentially unconstitutional. Cruz used this to frame Jackson as having a long-term "record of activism" on behalf of sexual predators.

The NYPD's "Stop, Question, and Frisk" policy began under Rudy Giuliani and expanded significantly under Michael Bloomberg, reaching 650,000 stops annually. While the murder rate declined during this period, data shows that the actual arrest rate resulting from these stops only increased marginally. Legal challenges eventually addressed the unconstitutional implementation of the practice.