The question to the Supreme Court justice seemed lighthearted, following inquiries about her favorite song and what book she is reading.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s answer was deeply serious.
When a federal judge asked the justice what kept her up at night, Justice Jackson paused, then said, “I would say the state of our democracy.”
The crowd was quiet for a moment, then burst into applause.
“I’m really very interested in getting people to focus and to invest and to pay attention to what is happening in our country and in our government,” she said at an event on Thursday for the Indianapolis Bar Association.
Justice Jackson did not elaborate on what she meant or detail specific concerns. Still, it was striking for a sitting Supreme Court justice to go out of her way to publicly express concern about the state of the country.
Although Justice Jackson, 54, is the court’s most junior member, she has not hesitated to use her voice, writing an unusually large number of concurring and dissenting opinions during the court’s most recent term, which ended in late June.
She has also written sharp criticisms of her colleagues’ recent emergency rulings that have given President Donald J. Trump broad powers to reshape the federal government; deport immigrants to third countries, in some cases war-torn nations; and to end protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants. Together, her writings and her public remarks suggest that the court’s newest member is growing increasingly dissatisfied with the direction of the country.
Earlier this week, in a scathing 15-page dissent, she wrote that a decision by the court to allow the Trump administration to move ahead with firing tens of thousands of federal workers was “not only truly unfortunate but also hubristic and senseless.”
Writing for herself and joined by neither of the court’s two other liberal members, she wrote that the justices had weakened the authority of federal trial judges by swooping in to “second-guess a lower court’s factual findings.”
Her words echoed a sharp dissent she had issued in late June in a landmark ruling by the court that curtailed the power of federal judges to issue sweeping blocks on Trump administration policies, including pausing President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. The majority, she wrote, was creating “a zone of lawlessness within which the executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes.”
That led to an unusually targeted critique from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, one of the court’s conservatives, who wrote the majority opinion in the case.
“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,” Justice Barrett wrote, in an opinion signed by all five of the other Republican appointees.
During Thursday’s event, Justice Jackson did not revisit those debates, instead largely focusing on her personal story and her journey to becoming the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.
But near the end of the discussion, Justice Jackson opened up about her experiences as a justice since joining the court in 2022. She said she was surprised to learn how formally the justices treat one another, even when they are out of public view.
“I kind of thought maybe when the justices go into conference, they let their hair down a little bit,” she said. Instead, she said that their relationship remains ceremonial even “behind closed doors when no one is there.”
She explained that she felt compelled to write dissents when she had “a slightly different perspective, or a different take on something” from the other justices.
Often, justices who share a desired outcome on a case come together to agree on a single opinion, even in dissents. But Justice Jackson described going to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s most senior liberal justice, to let her know that she would be writing on her own.
“I will say, forgive me, Justice Sotomayor, but I need to write on this case, and it’s because I feel like I might have something to offer and something to add,” Justice Jackson said.
“I’m not afraid to use my voice,” she added.
Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting.
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