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Sat, 05 Jul 2025 07:53:24 -0700
marlon from private IP, post #13708748
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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/one-of-the-supreme-court-s-sharpest-critics-sits-on-it/ar-AA1I0YZH
Dissenting — again — on the last day of the Supreme Court’s term, in its most high-profile case, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did not mince words.
She had for months plainly criticized the opinions of her conservative colleagues, trading the staid legalese typical of justices’ decisions for impassioned
arguments against what she has described as their acquiescence to President Donald Trump. She returned to that theme again in the final case, ripping the court
for limiting nationwide injunctions.
“The majority’s ruling … is … profoundly dangerous, since it gives the Executive the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power
the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate,” Jackson wrote.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett leveled an unusually personal retort in her majority opinion. “We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds
with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself,” Barrett wrote. “We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries
an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”
The extraordinary clash reflected deepening divisions on the court and the place Jackson has increasingly staked out as a leading voice of dissent, challenging
the 6-3 conservative supermajority.
She wrote more dissents this term than any other justice. Overall, she penned 24 opinions, second only to the prolific Clarence Thomas. Jackson also far
exceeded her colleagues in the number of words she spoke during oral arguments. She uttered more than 79,000; Sonia Sotomayor, her liberal colleague, came in a
distant second, at 53,000.
In her third term, one legal expert said, she has carved out a space on the left similar to what Thomas has held on the right. Writing frequently, often
dissenting, and sometimes willing to depart from her liberal colleagues.
Tempers and disagreements often flared in the Trump-related cases that have filled the docket, with the majority repeatedly green-lighting some of his most
controversial policies. The ruling on nationwide injunctions, which stemmed from a challenge of Trump’s ban on birthright citizenship, drew seven separate
opinions. Clashes erupted during culture-war cases in which the court allowed states to ban gender transition care for trans minors and gave parents permission
to opt their children out of classroom lessons that clash with their religious beliefs.
Even a technical case on disability rights yielded five separate opinions — surprising given it was not the type of hot-button issue that would normally draw
reams of writing from the justices.
“We are seeing longer separate opinions, but also more diverse views than we have in the past,” said Adam Feldman of Empirical SCOTUS, who has compiled data
showing the number of opinions the justices are filing is rising even when they agree.
Jackson frequently disagreed with the substance of the conservative majority’s rulings this term but most strikingly offering a sustained, blunt and unsparing
critique of how the court went about its work.
Again and again, Jackson accused the conservative bloc of weighing cases in a rushed, reckless and partisan fashion that undermined the high court’s mission
to be an arbiter of fair and impartial justice — delivering results for Trump.
She summed up the sentiment baldly in a dissent in a case clearing the way for Trump to strip temporary protections from migrants: “The Court has plainly
botched this assessment today.”
Melissa Murray, a New York University law professor, said Jackson is not so much embracing a new role as she is growing more comfortable being the justice who
showed up on day one, jumping into oral arguments during her first case and grilling attorneys. Her first opinion was a dissent.
“I think this term, we have seen her take a more forthright approach in the way her colleagues are facilitating the administration,” Murray said. “I
don’t know that she goes so far as to say they are in the bag for the administration, but she does come close.”
Her role is particularly notable because she is the court’s most junior justice. Jackson, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, is the first Black woman
to serve on the high court.
“She’s found her footing maybe faster than other justices historically,” said Morgan Ratner, a lawyer who worked as a law clerk to Chief Justice John G.
Roberts Jr. and to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh during his tenure on the D.C. Circuit.
She also is responding to the limits of power that come with being on the court’s minority, said Michele Goodwin, a Georgetown University law professor. As a
result, Goodwin said, Jackson is writing on two tracks, one legal and the other rhetorical.
“She realizes the balls and strikes on the court, and what she’s doing is writing … forward for a different day,” Goodwin said.
Some of Jackson’s fiercest dissents came in the record number of emergency cases — 19 in all — that the president brought to the Supreme Court this term,
mostly seeking to lift lower-court blocks on his blitz of executive orders.
By and large, the Trump administration found great success in those cases, convincing the justices to allow it to go forward with removing independent agency
heads, firing thousands of federal workers and barring transgender people from the military.
Cases on the emergency docket don’t receive full briefings or arguments, the decisions come quickly, and the justices often don’t explain the reasoning for
their rulings. Critics call it the “shadow docket” for its lack of transparency.
Jackson repeatedly used dissents in those cases to call out her colleagues for hurrying to rule before fuller deliberations in the lower courts, keeping the
public in the dark about the majority’s thinking and supposedly bending the process to benefit the president.
One of the Supreme Court’s sharpest critics sits on it
One of the Supreme Court’s sharpest critics sits on it
She panned the court’s work in such cases as “fly-by-night” as part of an emergency ruling that cleared the Trump administration to use a wartime
authority known as the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants. The court also found they must be given due process.
“With more and more of our most significant rulings taking place in the shadows of our emergency docket, today’s Court leaves less and less of a trace,”
Jackson wrote. “But make no mistake: We are just as wrong now as we have been in the past, with similarly devastating consequences. It just seems we are now
less willing to face it.”
Decorum frayed in other cases as well. Conservative Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and Jackson, who have sometimes aligned on cases, traded accusations that each was
twisting legal arguments to reach the outcome they desired in the case involving whether a retired firefighter could sue her former employer under the Americans
With Disabilities Act.
In a 7-2 ruling allowing fuel companies to challenge California’s strict vehicle emissions standards, Jackson said the court was more willing to hear the
cases of “moneyed interests.”
“This Court’s simultaneous aversion to hearing cases involving the potential vindication of the rights of less powerful litigants — workers, criminal
defendants, and the condemned, among others — will further fortify that impression,” she wrote.
Kavanaugh, who wrote the majority opinion in the case, said a review of the court’s work “disproves that suggestion.”
Jonathan Adler, a law professor at William and Mary who has studied the issue, also said that contention was inaccurate. He pointed out no other liberals joined
Jackson in that statement and in some other cases as well. He said the liberals seemed less unified this term.
“She’s staked out positions and made claims that appear to be beyond what her colleagues are willing to sign on to,” Adler said. “In some cases, it may
be she’s making claims her colleagues don’t agree with or think are prudent to put forward.”
Jackson’s outspokenness has drawn fire from conservative media, sometimes in racial terms. In recent days, conservative commentator Charlie Kirk called her a
“diversity hire” and said the only reason she was on the court was because she is a Black woman.
Jackson declined an interview request. But in the midst of a term sparring with her conservative colleagues, she has found a way to deal with the challenges of
being in the minority on the high court, she told the Associated Press: boxing.
“I think that helps you to really get out any frustrations,” she said.
Ann E. Marimow contributed to this report.
Mon, 07 Jul 2025 12:13:42 -0700
zerosugar from private IP
Reply #15885179
she is one of those oppressed in the sheets and liberated in the streets type. funny how the token black female judge is married to straight up white guy, part
of the Boston Brahmin group. unions such as these between somebody who is a symbol for the woke and tend to always make a statement about both parties. anyway,
all the racial tensions raised by leftists are clearly intended to divide and if people like Ketanji and AOC (who also has a white bf) cared so much about their
race, they would marry their own kind. ilhan omar also stated that white men are the problem while she left her Somali husband for a white dude. a married white
dude at that.
ilhan wanted white men profiled.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/genocidal-language-jd-vance-blasts-ilhan-omars-call-to-profile-white-men/articleshow/120915138.cms
Mon, 07 Jul 2025 12:16:24 -0700
zerosugar from private IP
Reply #10821666
opps my message got cut off because of brackets
*unions such as these between somebody who is a symbol for the woke and insert x caucasian person tend to always make a statement about both parties.
I also really dislike Amy Coney Barrett. She should be a professor at Loyola or something.
Mon, 07 Jul 2025 12:16:50 -0700
zerosugar from private IP
Reply #12454671
Gorsuch to me is a handsome guy.
Mon, 07 Jul 2025 12:52:03 -0700
marlon from private IP
Reply #14688682
I also really dislike Amy Coney Barrett.
u do? why??
Mon, 07 Jul 2025 12:53:53 -0700
marlon from private IP
Reply #14071531
u just know these white dudes that get married to these high profile minority types are getting pegged, i don't envy them
Mon, 07 Jul 2025 18:22:22 -0700
zerosugar from private IP
Reply #19253341
@marlonTest she is just a big time virtue signaler, the worst type of American
Catholic. she votes with the right on all the wrong issues and votes with the left on all the wrong issues. i think trump could have appointed somebody better.
i’m obviously a Roman Catholic myself, but I can’t stand behind people like Amy Coney Barrett. there were many irish catholics like her at my parish.
fanatical when they shouldn’t be and silent when the parish needed their voices.
Mon, 07 Jul 2025 19:56:04 -0700
whiteguyinchina from private IP
Reply #11458239
I dunno. America needs that doesn't it? You couldn't very well have an unanimous supreme court given the divisions politically.
What i have to come to accept is that the pendulum nature of American cities is what gives it it's stability
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