Justice Jackson Is Even Dumber Than We Thought
by Matt Margolis
We’ve previously covered Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent in Trump v. CASA Inc., yet it somehow manages to be worse than we initially thought. I think we can easily say that her dissent proves that she’s not a serious member of the Supreme Court.
In the recent case concerning birthright citizenship and nationwide injunctions, while Justice Amy Coney Barrett delivered a majority opinion grounded in the Constitution and centuries of precedent, Jackson’s dissent veered into the realm of the absurd. Instead of offering a rigorous legal argument, Jackson resorted to rhetorical theatrics and bizarre hypotheticals, leaving observers wondering if she grasps the gravity of her role on the nation’s highest court.
Barrett was brutal when she called out Jackson’s dissent as “untethered” to both precedent and the Constitution. She pointedly remarked, “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. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.” That’s a polite way of saying Jackson’s reasoning is so far afield that it belongs in a law school debate club, not the Supreme Court.
But Jackson didn’t just stop at ignoring precedent — she also tried to inject some late-night comedy timing into her writing. She actually included a parenthetical “wait for it,” as if her dissent were a stand-up routine rather than a legal document.
As I understand the concern, in this clash over the respective powers of two coordinate branches of Government, the majority sees a power grab — but not by a presumably lawless Executive choosing to act in a manner that flouts the plain text of the Constitution. Instead, to the majority, the power-hungry actors are . . . (wait for it) . . . the district courts.
It’s hard to imagine any of the Court’s great legal minds stooping to such gimmicks. And then it got worse.
She took her dissent into science fiction territory. She actually wrote, “A Martian arriving here from another planet would see these circumstances and surely wonder: ‘what good is the Constitution, then?’”