WASHINGTON — The Senate Judiciary Committee is beginning historic confirmation hearings Monday for Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who would be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.

Barring a significant misstep by the 51-year-old Judge Jackson, who has been on the federal bench for the past nine years, Democrats who control the Senate by the slimmest of margins intend to wrap up her confirmation before Easter.

Judge Jackson is expected to present an opening statement Monday afternoon, then answer questions from the committee’s 11 Democrats and 11 Republicans over the next two days. She will be introduced by a retired judge for the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Thomas B. Griffith, and a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Lisa M. Fairfax.

Judge Jackson appeared before the same committee last year, after President Biden chose her to fill an opening on the federal appeals court in Washington, just down the hill from the Supreme Court.

Her testimony will give most Americans, as well as the Senate, their most extensive look yet at the Harvard-trained lawyer with a resume that includes two years as a federal public defender. That makes her the first nominee with significant criminal defense experience since Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first Black American to serve on the nation’s highest court.

In addition to being the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, Judge Jackson would be the third Black justice, after Justice Marshall and his successor, Justice Clarence Thomas.

The American Bar Association, which evaluates judicial nominees, on Friday gave Judge Jackson its highest rating, unanimously “well qualified.”

The general counsel of the NAACP, Janette McCarthy Wallace, said she is excited to see a Black woman on the verge of a high court seat.

“Representation matters,” Ms. Wallace said. “It’s critical to have diverse experience on the bench. It should reflect the rich cultural diversity of this country.”

It’s not yet clear how aggressively Republicans will go after Jackson, given that her confirmation would not alter the court’s 6-3 conservative majority.

Still, some Republicans have signaled they could use Judge Jackson’s nomination to try to brand Democrats as soft on crime, an emerging theme in GOP midterm election campaigns. Mr. Biden has chosen several former public defenders for life-tenured judicial posts. In addition, Judge Jackson served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency created by Congress to reduce disparity in federal prison sentences.

Senator Hawley highlighted one potential line of attack. “I’ve noticed an alarming pattern when it comes to Judge Jackson’s treatment of sex offenders, especially those preying on children,” Mr. Hawley wrote on Twitter last week in a thread that was echoed by the Republican National Committee. Mr. Hawley did not raise the issue when he questioned Judge Jackson last year before voting against her appeals court confirmation.

The White House pushed back forcefully against the criticism as “toxic and weakly presented misinformation.” Sentencing expert Douglas Berman, an Ohio State law professor, wrote on his blog that Judge Jackson’s record shows she is skeptical of the range of prison terms recommended for child pornography cases, “but so too were prosecutors in the majority of her cases and so too are district judges nationwide.”

Mr. Hawley is one of several committee Republicans, along with Senators Cruz and Cotton, who are potential 2024 presidential candidates, and their aspirations may collide with other Republicans who would just as soon not pursue a scorched-earth approach to Judge Jackson’s nomination.

Mr. Biden chose Judge Jackson in February, fulfilling a campaign pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court for the first time in American history. She would take the seat of Justice Stephen Breyer, who announced in January that he would retire this summer after 28 years on the court.

Judge Jackson once worked as a high court law clerk to Justice Breyer early in her legal career.

Democrats are moving quickly to confirm Judge Jackson, even though Breyer’s seat will not officially open until the summer. They have no votes to spare in a 50-50 Senate that they run by virtue of the tiebreaking vote of Vice President Harris.

But they are not moving as fast as Republicans did when they installed Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the court little more than a month after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the leadup to the 2020 presidential election.

Justice Barrett, the third of President Trump’s high court picks, entrenched the court’s conservative majority when she took the place of the liberal Justice Ginsburg.

Last year, Judge Jackson won Senate confirmation by a 53-44 vote, with three Republicans supporting her. It’s not clear how many Republicans might vote for her this time.

Judge Jackson is married to a surgeon in Washington,  Patrick Johnson. They have two daughters, one in college and the other in high school. 

Judge Jackson has spoken about how her children have kept her in touch with reality, even as she has held a judge’s gavel since 2013. In the courtroom, she told an audience in Athens, Georgia, in 2017, “people listen and generally do what I tell them to do.”

At home, though, her daughters “make it very clear I know nothing, I should not tell them anything, much less give them any orders, that is, if they talk to me at all,” Judge Jackson said.