Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told a group of lawyers and judges on Thursday that “the state of our democracy” is what keeps her up at night.
“I’m really interested in getting people to focus and to invest and to pay attention to what is happening in our country and in our government,” Jackson said during a question-and-answer portion of an Indianapolis Bar Association meeting.
“I’m not afraid to use my voice,” Jackson said earlier in the event.
Jackson has emerged as the court’s fiercest critic of the Trump administration — and of some of her fellow justices.
Her comments came on the heels of remarks this past weekend at an event in Louisiana, where she explained why she writes so many dissents and speaks the most of any justice at oral arguments, even as the court’s most junior member.
“I just feel that I have a wonderful opportunity to tell people in my opinions how I feel about the issues, and that’s what I try to do,” Jackson said Saturday at the Essence Festival of Culture in New Orleans.
Her dissent in the nationwide injunction case, which reined in federal judges’ ability to issue sweeping orders and stemmed from Mr. Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, prompted an unusually sharp reply from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, which the five other conservatives joined.
Jackson wrote that the majority’s decision “to permit the executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law.”
Barrett said Jackson’s dissent “chooses a startling line of attack” that is “at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself.”
“Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary,” Barrett wrote.
And on Tuesday, when the court said the administration could move forward with plans, for now, to cut the federal workforce, Jackson stood alone, calling the order “not only truly unfortunate, but also hubristic and senseless.”
“For some reason, this court sees fit to step in now and release the president’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation,” she wrote in a dissent that saw her at odds with all eight of her colleagues.
In Indianapolis, she said she was unfazed by the criticism she’s received for her dissents, saying she had a “very thick skin.”
Before Mr. Trump won reelection, Jackson said she was “concerned” about the court’s landmark decision that granted him immunity from prosecution for official acts he took while in office. She suggested that the ruling gives Mr. Trump special treatment compared to anyone else in the criminal justice system.
“I was concerned about a system that appeared to provide immunity for one individual under one set of circumstances, when we have a criminal justice system that had ordinarily treated everyone the same,” she said.
Jan Crawford is CBS News’ chief legal correspondent and a recognized authority on the Supreme Court. Her 2007 book, “Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for the Control of the United States Supreme Court” (Penguin Press), gained critical acclaim and became an instant New York Times Bestseller.
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