Ketanji Brown Jackson may be the most junior justice on the Supreme Court, but she has no qualms about making her voice heard. The Biden appointee offered a blunt response when asked Thursday what keeps her up at night.
“Um, I would say the state of our democracy,” Jackson said, drawing applause from the audience at the Indianapolis Bar Association event.
“I am 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 added.
Jackson did not elaborate on her concerns.
Jackson issued a series of fiery dissents during the most recent Supreme Court term, including in a case related to the Trump administration’s push for mass firings in federal agencies. She criticized the court majority for releasing “the President’s wrecking ball” by granting his appeal.
Perhaps most notably, in June, Jackson dissented from the majority opinion that halted nationwide injunctions that blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order attempting to restrict birthright citizenship while litigation on the matter proceeds.
The court’s opinion “gives the Executive the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate,” Jackson wrote, adding, “It is not difficult to predict how this all ends. Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more.”
The stinging words prompted an unusually scathing response from Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the majority’s opinion, calling Jackson’s dissent “a startling line of attack.”
“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,” the Trump appointee wrote.
