Shawn Fleetwood reminds Federalist readers that the nation’s newest Supreme Court justice was not appointed to be a jurist.
While the Supreme Court’s 2024 term has come to an end, there’s one opinion that’s still generating widespread conversation within America’s political discourse.
In the high court’s Trump v. CASA decision nuking lower courts’ abuse of universal injunctions, Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson authored what can best be described as an unhinged judicial temper tantrum. In a roughly 20-page dissent, the Biden appointee espoused furious indignation at the majority’s refusal to allow rogue district judges to unilaterally undermine the powers of the executive branch — a position which Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett characterized as “a vision of the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush.”
While Jackson’s left-wing advocacy on the high court is nothing new, her dissent in the case represents just how low the junior justice is willing to sink to use her position to advance an ideology wholly antithetical to America’s constitutional order.
At the outset of her opinion, Jackson attempts to ominously portray the Court’s decision to kneecap the judicial coup seeking to nullify the will of 2024 election voters as an “existential threat to the rule of law.” Under the majority’s adopted standard, she argues, the executive will now be permitted to run wild and violate Americans’ protected liberties with virtually no pushback or consequences. …
… But accepting Jackson’s premise requires dismissing a key aspect of America’s constitutional framework. That is, the various checks and balances developed by the founders that grants each branch powers to “check” one another and ensure uniform compliance with the Constitution.
The system that Jackson poses in her dissent could not be further from this dynamic. In fact, as described by Barrett, the system the junior justice is advocating for is one that elevates an “imperial Judiciary” — in which unelected lawyers in black robes have the final say on matters of law and public policy in America.
