Below is my column in The Hill on the chilling jurisprudence of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Jackson’s description of opinions as an opportunity for commentary on contemporary issues is a radical departure from long-standing traditions on the Court. While justices have occasionally strayed into extraneous issues, Jackson appears to view her position as giving her a license to vent, including questioning the principles and integrity of her colleagues.
Here is the column:
“I just feel that I have a wonderful opportunity.”
Those words of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson came in a recent interview, wherein the justice explained how she felt liberated after becoming a member of the Supreme Court “to tell people in my opinions how I feel about the issues. And that’s what I try to do.”
Jackson’s sense of liberation has increasingly become the subject of consternation on the court itself, as she unloads on her colleagues in strikingly strident opinions.
Most recently, Jackson went ballistic after her colleagues reversed another district court judge who issued a sweeping injunction barring the Trump Administration from canceling roughly $783 million in grants in the National Institutes of Health.
Again writing alone, Jackson unleashed a tongue-lashing on her colleagues, who she suggested were unethical, unthinking cutouts for Trump. She denounced her fellow justices, stating, “This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this administration always wins.”
For some of us who have followed Jackson’s interestingly controversial tenure on the court, it was crushingly ironic. Although Jackson accused her colleagues of following a new rule that they must always rule with Trump, she herself is widely viewed as the very embodiment of the actual rule of the made-up game based on the comic strip of Calvin and Hobbes. In Jacksonian jurisprudence, it often seems like there are no fixed rules, only fixed outcomes. She then attacks her colleagues for a lack of integrity or empathy.
To quote Calvin, Jackson proves that “there’s no problem so awful that you can’t add some guilt to it and make it even worse.”
Jackson has attacked her colleagues in opinions, shattering traditions of civility and restraint. Her colleagues have clearly had enough. She now regularly writes diatribes that neither of her fellow liberals — Justices Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan — are willing to sign on to. Indeed, she has raged against opinions that her liberal colleagues have joined.
Take Stanley v. City of Sanford. Justices Jackson and Neil Gorsuch took some fierce swings at each other in a case concerning a retired firefighter who wants to sue her former employer. The majority, including Kagan, rejected a ridiculous claim from a Florida firefighter who sued for discrimination for a position that she had neither held nor sought. The court ruled that the language of the statute clearly required plaintiffs to be “qualified” for a given position before they could claim to have been denied it due to discrimination. (Stanley has Parkinson’s disease and had taken a disability retirement at age 47 due to the progress of the disease.)
Jackson, however, was irate that Stanley could not sue for the denial of a position that she never sought, held, or was qualified to perform. Jackson accused the majority of once again showing how “pure textualists can easily disguise their own preferences as ‘textual’ inevitabilities.” It was not only deeply insulting, but perfectly bizarre, given that Kagan had joined in the majority opinion. Kagan is about as pure a textualist judge as she is a pure taxidermist.
Gorsuch called Jackson out for once again ignoring the text of federal laws in order to secure the result she preferred in a given case. In other words, Jackson was playing Calvinball with the law.
Jackson, undeterred, has continued these diatribes, with escalating and insulting rhetoric. In Trump v. CASA, the court sought to rein in district courts issuing sweeping injunctions over the Executive Branch. Jackson went ballistic in her dissent, which neither Sotomayor nor Kagan would join.
Jackson accused her colleagues of blindly drifting toward “a rule-of-kings governing system.” She denounced the majority for “enabling our collective demise. At the very least, I lament that the majority is so caught up in minutiae of the government’s self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot.”
This is where Justice Amy Coney Barrett reached a breaking point, unleashing on Jackson in an opinion notably joined by her colleagues. Barrett noted that Jackson was describing “a vision of the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush.” She added: “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 is a slightly fancier way of describing Calvinball.
Jackson has also been criticized for making dubious or sensational claims, as in her opinion supporting affirmative action in higher education.
Jackson’s jurisprudence is the very model of a judiciary untethered from constitutional or institutional restraints. Not surprisingly, she is lionized in law schools for her rejection of judicial restraint and her pursuit of progressive outcomes. Yet, her approach is becoming increasingly lawless.
I truly believe that Jackson can leave a lasting legacy and bring an important voice to the court. However, this is one “wonderful opportunity” that Justice Jackson may want to let pass more often. Otherwise, she risks fulfilling that other lament from the cartoon Calvin: “I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep everyone’s expectations.”
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Blacks hate this country’s founders. Growing up in middle Nebraska, i had little experience with them until i went to Stephens. I had to work in the lunch rooms serving my classmates, to pay for tuition. Blacks got to go free. They tripped me with a tray full of food on heavy platters.
This year a Black islander invited me to say in he expensive home, then se stole my vitamins and flash drive that is vital to me life.
Then back women on Amtrak lied to me repeatedly and cost me to lose my rail stops, that turned my trip into a nightmare, where blacks at a shelter stole my expensive thyroid natural products. Then, having flown on Spirit Airlines, blacks delayed my departure absurdly so I had to sleep in the Boston airport a night. At Vegas airport my thyroid acted up and EMTS took me to hospital, blacks at a hospital in Vegas tied me down for 4 days, hands and feet, forced to me delicate on myself. Then blacks, stole clothes from my duffel bag and stole my locked luggage with all my vital records, new passport book, and also my organic vitamins. Still Vegas police refuse to assist me, investigate.
My ancestors came here 1600. covered the country via covered wagons.
The racist and misogynistic hatred and vitriol Turley has stirred up by writing this piece is absolutely shameful–but, that’s what MAGA media does. Let’s never forget how we got Gorsuch, Barrett, Kavanaugh and Alito–all of them lied about their position on Roe v. Wade being established precedent, fully intending to reverse this case at their earliest opportunity. All of them were first vetted by the Federalist Society. President Obama was DENIED by Mitch McConnell the right to name a justice when Scalia died, due to the alleged proximity of the election–a rule that didn’t apply to get Barrett onto the bench. ANYTHING to get power–we no longer have any rules. For context and another perspective, here’s how Joe Patrice of “Above the Law” describes the case and Justice Jackson’s reference to Calvin & Hobbes:
“The NIH has pulled a number of scientific grants since the Trump administration launched. Some were justified as “anti-DEI,” others for “gender ideology” and others because RFK Jr. wants to replace medicine with crystals and acai berries.
All of these moves scream “arbitrary and capricious” — the standard under the Administrative Procedure Act that prevents the government from issuing sweeping changes scribbled on the back of a cocktail napkin based on something Greg Gutfeld said while trying to reclaim the word “Nazi” among friends. But Brett Kavanaugh said “hold my beer” and then disagreed on the grounds of… well, he couldn’t really say but he assured us that it was “for reasons that the Government persuasively explained in its application to this Court,” before citing a string of non-sequiturs about the government not having to explicitly define “DEI” before wildly slashing research focused on preventing HIV among Black people. Meanwhile, Gorsuch huffed and puffed that “Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” by citing Dept of Ed. v. California, which WAS ITSELF A SHADOW DOCKET EMERGENCY APPLICATION, adding a whole other layer to the Calvinball analogy. As Jackson notes in her opinion, “As it turns out, the Court’s decision was an even bigger mistake than I realized…. That case’s ipse dixit now apparently governs all APA challenges to grant-funding determinations that the Government asks us to address in the context of an emergency stay application.”
What Jackson didn’t realize is that the California order is binding precedent because Gorsuch wore a mask that inning!
Five justices decided that the NIH cuts already made can go forward (to, maybe, eventually get challenged in the Court of Federal Claims), while five decided that the underlying stay barring the government from making more of these cuts remains. Amy Coney Barrett flip-flopped between these inseparable positions by living on her own private administrative law island where a plaintiff has to go to two different courts — “sequentially rather than simultaneously” — to first get a ruling that the cut was arbitrary and capricious and then a ruling from the other court that the cut should be reversed based on that.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote separately to point out that Barrett’s logic was — to paraphrase with the technical legal terminology — stupid.
And if the District Court had jurisdiction to vacate the directives, it also had jurisdiction to vacate the “Resulting Grant Terminations.”
Obviously. Yet, we’re in this boat because Roberts has let this court bless executive orders issued with all the coherence of a drunk improv troupe. When Jackson writes that the other rule of GOP jurisprudence is “and this Administration always wins,” it’s particularly biting because at least Hobbes occasionally got one over on Calvin.
Jackson concludes:
The approach the Court adopts today (which, again, no party advocated for) neither coheres legally nor operates practically. So, unfortunately, this newest entry in the Court’s quest to make way for the Executive Branch has real consequences, for the law and for the public. Fortunately, at least for the law, this order is not the last word, as it is not “conclusive as to the merits.”
Alas, as she already noted when addressing the California issue, her colleagues respect that these orders are not conclusive as to the merits… until they don’t. Calvinball. All the way down. And unlike the comic strip, there’s no punchline here — just real medical breakthroughs slipping down the drain to own the libs.”
I can see that you have yet to see a licensed psychiatrist. Please do so before your psychiatric break from reality is complete.
Shameful is not fulfilling the intent of the American Founders, the men who made this country.
To wit,
Preamble to the Constitution of the American Founders and Framers
We the PEOPLE of the United States…secure the Blessings of Liberty to OURSELVES and our POSTERITY….
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1798, and 1802 (four iterations for maximal clarity)
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof…
By habitually presenting skewed personal opinions, it could be said that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is successfully building a case for her impeachment and removal.
Considering the serious impacts that she potentially has on the nation’s future, your points are very legitimate.
A rational, decent human being would have been too prohibitively embarrassed to accept the wanton gifting of a Supreme Court justiceship, compelling criteria having not been met.
The real question is how long is the grace period for slavery when even the “Great Benefactor” of blacks in U.S. history, Lincoln, understood that that sole, definitive, and actual solution was compassionate repatriation?
To wit,
“There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races … A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas …
“Racial separation, Lincoln went on to say, ‘must be effected by colonization’ of the country’s blacks to a foreign land. ‘The enterprise is a difficult one,’ he acknowledged,
“but ‘where there is a will there is a way,’ and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be.”
– Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857.
Turley could, at minimum, not try to spin the facts on what the Stanley v. City of Stanford case was about. Turley omits the critical detail that the Plaintiff, who became disabled at age 47, was suing because the city arbitrarily cut off the $1,000 per month subsidy for health insurance premiums after 2 years instead of to age 65, which was the rule when she became disabled. She was therefore forced to try to make the $1,300 per month premiums on her disability income. She wasn’t trying to get her job back. And Turley tries to make the case that Justice Jackson is, somehow, out on a limb on the point of whether the ADA should to disabled former employees. That is an issue that lower courts were divided on. From “USA Today”:
“Lower courts have been divided over whether retirees are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The law was designed to protect active employees and job applicants from discrimination. It was not intended as a law that extended to employers’ relationships with former employees, the business groups and associations representing cities and counties against Stanley’s allegations argued.
The law covers someone who “with or without reasonable accommodation, can perform the essential functions of the employment position that such individual holds or desires.”
Stanley’s lawyers argued she was employed – and thus covered by the law − when her future benefits were curtailed in 2003.
When Stanley became a firefighter in 1999, the city paid for $1,000 of her approximately $1,300 monthly premium for health insurance. Anyone retiring after 25 years of service or because of a disability would continue to receive the benefit until age 65.
After Stanley left the department in 2018 at 47 due to Parkinson’s disease, she discovered that benefits for disabled retirees were reduced in 2003.
The city covered $1,000 of her $1,300 monthly health insurance premium for only two years, after which she was required to pay the whole premium herself.
Arguing that the city discriminated against her because of her disability, Stanley sued, asking the city to continue to pay $1,000 of her monthly insurance premium until she turns 65.
The city countered that even though Stanley’s benefits were reduced, the company treated her better – not worse – than non-disabled employees who retired with less than 25 years of service because those employees get no subsidy while she retained it for two years.”
But, Turley’s assignments today were: 1. continue to distract away from Trump’s failures at negotiation while Putin buys time, ramping up deliberate attacks on civilians to kill more Ukrainians and gaining more of their territory to use as leverage; 2. distract away from JD Vance’s disasterous interview with Kristin Welker, in which he claimed that all wars end with “negotiations”–that’s not true–most wars, including WWI and WWII ended with unconditional surrender, something that Trump has made impossible in the Russian invasion of Ukraine because he withdrew tactical support and paused arms to Ukraine, already sided with Putin that he should be rewarded by keeping Ukrainian territory and no NATO membership for Ukraine; 3. continue to distract away from the Epstein scandal; and 4. find some way to attack a Democrat or, in this case, Justice Jackson.
Why did failed President Biden invite Putin to invade Ukraine? What dirt does Putin have on the Biden Crime Family?
This is a part of what the 1964-1965-Acts wrought on USA. Tokenism, affirmative actions, reducing standards, testings, and the gene pool itself shrinking. Too deep into the abyss. This and the 0bama islam cancer will be fatal. Selah
From “Demand Justice”:
“Jackson would be the most experienced trial court judge to join the Supreme Court in almost a century.
Jackson served on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for nearly 8 years, giving her more trial court experience than any sitting Supreme Court justice and more than any justice since Edward Sanford, who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1923.
Jackson would be only the second sitting justice to serve at all three levels of the federal judiciary.
Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor has also served as a District judge, Circuit judge and Supreme Court justice.
Jackson would bring more years of experience as a judge than four of the sitting justices combined.
Jackson has more than eight years of experience as a judge; that’s more than Justices Thomas, Roberts, Kagan, and Barrett had combined when they were confirmed.
Jackson would be the first public defender to become a Supreme Court justice in the history of the Court.
She would be the first justice with substantial criminal defense experience since Thurgood Marshall retired in 1991.
JACKSON HAS WON BIPARTISAN SUPPORT AND PRAISE
Jackson has been confirmed by the Senate on a bipartisan basis three times. In 2021, Jackson was confirmed to the United States Circuit Court for the District of Columbia with the support of Republican Sens. Murkowski, Collins, and Graham.
Former Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan: “My praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, for her integrity – it is unequivocal.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX): “Very impressive background … extensive trial court experience.”
Republican-appointed judge Thomas Griffith, who supported Jackson’s elevation to the D.C. Circuit after observing her work as a judge, recently said: “Her academic record is remarkable. She has a breadth of experience, which is really quite unique.”
When Jackson was nominated to the D.C. Circuit, she received support from Supreme Court clerks for Justices Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist, Kennedy, Souter, and O’Connor.
INDEPENDENT ANALYSTS: JACKSON IS ‘HIGHLY QUALIFIED’ WITH A ‘GLITTERING RESUME’ AND A ‘VERY DISTINGUISHED RECORD’”
Say, let us know if you need help finding a psychiatrist. You don’t seem to have one yet, and you so desperately need help.
Would love to hear what Justice Stephen Breyer really thinks about his successor.
He’s fine with it.
KJB’s screeds are the inevitable product of elevating DEI over competence and merit. She is an XX chromosomal loon in black robes and needs to be treated as such. The biggest favor that Justices Sotomayor and Kagan could bestow upon the Court would be to resign while 47 is president, further diluting the loon’s impact. Unlikely…, but a juicy potential…, no?
Sotomayor has not looked too good in her recent public appearances. Not exactly the picture of robust health.
I say she’s the first of the libs to step down. Or maybe she’ll pull an RBG.
I don’t think it would matter that much if Sotomayor were to step down now or pull an “RBG” stunt. Mainly because hell have a better chance at freezing over before a Democrat regain the White House. Unless something catastrophic happens under Trump’s watch, more than likely Vance will succeed Trump as POTUS in the next presidential election.
Erratum: “KBJ’s screeds”….
*. DEI is affirmative action. Equal protection did away with it.
“. . . pure textualists can easily disguise their own preferences as ‘textual’ inevitabilities.”
In layman’s terms, she’s saying the other Justices are just enacting their own desired political outcomes. That is far beyond a disagreement on the meaning of the law. It is accusing the other Justices of not being judges but politicians. This is just the latest example of how the Left is willing to destroy all civility, traditions, norms, and standards that hold society together, in order to “get Trump.” The raid on Mar-a-Lago was another example. Arresting him and taking his mug shot was another, although all of these backfired. But as the Professor has pointed out in the past, the following passage from A Man for All Seasons is good to keep in mind:
William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?
What’s the most chilling (and telling) Professor Turley is that neither you or any of your fellow Democrat lawyers who are her fellow members of The Washington DC Bar Association will lodge an ethics complaint against her or any of the other lawless Democrat judges and prosecutors who are your fellow members of that bar.
Your Code Of Professional Conduct states you are OBLIGATED to do so where you see a violation. But instead, you just monetize their unconstitutional lawlessness, by writing and selling analysis of it.
Not a shred of personal or professional ethics to be found in any of you.
Lye down with dogs and get up with their fleas. You are those you choose to associate with, professor Turley.
Judicial opinions, even ridiculous ones, are not the basis for an ethics complaint. If you disagree, please cite the rule of judicial conduct of the DC bar that you believe she has violated.
Is Justice Brown a parapsychologist that has ESP, by that I mean she reasons that a biological male is no more definitive than a biological female, and she uses the lack of a biological degree to make the claim. She use’s precognition in reverse, posting past accusation or grievances in a predictive manner for the future. Her behavior is remindful of an Anomalistic individual with ESP using phenomenon for elucidation. Or: maybe it’s better to be straight forward, she’s just plain CRAZY!
Impeachment may be on horizon.
*. Jackson is anti-constitution and anti- USA. She’s a wound that won’t heal.
So it is…
Sadly-ironic, but not surprising, that Biden’s puppeteers (he’s a brain-dead moron who had no idea what “his” administration was doing at any time) would illustrate so perfectly why meritocracy is always better than DEI token appointments like her.
It’s just sad that they chose such a blatantly-awful example of Far Left Democrat activism, which Jackson is, and which should have been a giant disqualifier. The fact that she disagrees with both Kagan and Sotomayor so often makes this an irrefutable truth.
I was always a huge Calvin and Hobbes fan, so these perfect references from Professor Turley are especially meaningful for me.
I read this piece while on vacation travels a few days ago at The Hill. The money shot:
Jackson’s jurisprudence is the very model of a judiciary untethered from constitutional or institutional restraints. Not surprisingly, she is lionized in law schools for her rejection of judicial restraint and her pursuit of progressive outcomes. Yet, her approach is becoming increasingly lawless.
Kudos to you Professor Turley. You probably caught hell by Leftist law profs for that quote. Yet it was a well written article and 🎯 critiques of this embarrassing Justice.
When Republicans take more seats in the Senate, she and other Leftist Federal District Judges need to be shown the door and removed from the bench. They can become infamous like Jim Acosta and Joy(less) Reid once they were fired as well
I agree.
That’s what President Bukele did in El Salvador. He cleared out the corrupt judges. Not sure how he did it, but he did it.
KBJ mannerism is a guise, to ‘Look Smart’, as she lacks the wisdom of experience that only time can bring forth.
She is an Apprentice in this given time. Her hubris is lost in the search of a deeper meaning, that sometimes comes as an Epiphany and at other times can’t be found as her research and experience do not reach a serendipitous moment of realization. That applies to all Nine Justices, but is differentiated by the wisdom of experiences over time.
Which bring this to a different point, Four of the Nine Justices are reaching the endpoint of concurrent Wisdom (Contemporary Experiences), their collective life (Judicial Mind) has lost it’s relevance to some degree that they can no longer see that their Opinion(s) have become disconnected with today’s societal realities.
For KBJ’s part, this may be the issue (of her frustration of the SCOTUS), in that she is trying to push the envelope of Judicial Opinion toward Contemporary Experiences.
WE can only have faith that the SCOTUS will become a more congenial responsive Organism in addressing the Day’s Experiences (effectively responsive to the realities).
[I’m just taking a stab at KBJ’s ‘problem’ – It’s just a guess, I may be wrong]
When he got to the part about “Jacksonian jurisprudence” it suddenly seemed as if Prof. Turley were referring to the 19th century. Sure enough, there’s a tome with this title by Austin Allen about the Dred Scott case.
Since this term, while alliterative, has already been taken, I suggest “Ketanjive” (cf. “Calvinball”) as a new entry in next year’s OED.
I know a gal name o’ Way-Out Ketanji
A cute li’l chick and a rockin’ filly
She don’t play quidditch or Calvinball
She doin’ Ketanjive all over town
Ketanjive, Ketanjive,
Doin’ that crazy Ketanjive
Ketanjive, Ketanjive,
Ketanji sho’ can jive.
https://youtu.be/QvOuTInrue0
Might be ok, but scripture singles out silly women who are back biters and busybodies
There is no reality to the fluff concept of “Jackson’s interestingly controversial tenure”. You are watching the results of DEI in action.
DEI (parading under a various names) has been going on for decades and the products of that program/agenda are now reaching positions of power. Can you really expect people that did NOT achieve their positions in life on merit, but mainly on participation in an agenda that promotes physical characteristics and/or support of that agenda, to perform like those that achieved their positions on merit? No, such an expectation is absurd. Those products of DEI not only are lacking in merit, they believe that everyone else in similar positions arrived there the way they did.
If DEIers have invaded the system en masse without merit, how do you spot them if they have degrees and titles covering their lack of accomplishment? It is difficult but suspicion is raised when those individuals resort to ‘word salad’ responses when pressed on issues, totally tangential responses when expressing views opinions and a tendency to flood circumstances/arguments/agendas/programs with irrelevant data and reasoning. Keep in mind, given their weak educational backgrounds, opposing arguments seem nonsensical and irrelevant to theirs!
Believe the above premise or not. Your call. But continuing DEI programs delivers not only mediocrity to society, it does the greatest of disservice to all subgroups within society. For only a small taste, do not dwell on the inane comments/positions of Justice Brown Jackson, look how she was picked by a demented POTUS that was himself repeatedly rejected by the Democratic Party as ‘inane’. Then look back at how that POTUS himself progressed through a system to achieve his final position almost totally lacking in merit. Is this what you want, folks? Are you willing to accept such circumstances in your healthcare providers, lawyers, administrators and judges? If so, then you certainly accept them in your elected officials.
If you still are skeptical of DEI being nothing more than a slow race to achieve the highest levels of mediocrity, just watch Justice Brown Jackson’s career over the next 20 or so YEARS. Hopefully, for all our sake, I am wrong.
Very well said, Ex Dem. To put it in a nutshell: As Greg Guttfeld frequently says, do you want your next airline pilot to be a DEI pick or the one with the most knowledge, flight hours and experience?
I see a lot of people here are worried about decades of stupid Jackson decisions in our collective future. I’m honestly not particularly worried because I believe that after a few more ineffectual terms, Jackson will quietly resign and probably wind up dean of some law school. She’ll get bored of being the lone voice in the wilderness and having zero impact on the system.
Either this or she will be quietly forced out.
You ignore the possibility that she views herself as ‘warrior’ for the cause and, during her potentially long tenure, she will be joined by other ‘warriors’.
And do you really think that those that got her to her current position will sit idly by as she expresses desire to leave the position they staked out for the cause? She does that, she will be instantly black-balled within the Party and labeled a persona non grata. Her Party cares about the position, not her. And if she fails them she and all her circle, will learn a lesson the hard way.
You might be right. The Supreme Court might prove too confining for Ketanji, the theater kid.
KJB said in an interview that she was most surprised by the formality on the court – even behind the scenes. She was a clerk for Justice Breyer so she knew there was a formality to the court, didn’t she? Why would she say in interviews that she was surprised by it? She is letting the public know that doesn’t particularly like being tethered to institutional or even judicial restraints. She was a theater kid. She likes being on stage and performing her oratories. She likes the limelight. She has said in interviews that her role as a judge is to evaluate arguments before her and then decide what ‘should be.’ Asking Ketanji to be restrained by judicial norms, fidelity to precedence, the Constitution? Nah. She’s got her own opinions about it. Don’t fence her in.
Thinking about Ketanji’s surprise, and clear dislike of the formalities of the court, even behind the scenes, reminds me of exactly what Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex said about joining the Royal Family. She too, was surprised by their formality even behind the scenes. And then she proceeded to buck the system, and the beloved Queen, as she plowed ahead doing it all ‘her way.’ Same energy. Same ‘rock the boat’ vibes as Ketanji. And if norms, rules, precedence and formality is really not your jam, then clearly you are not a good match for the court. This became obvious during KBJs confirmation hearings. She’s not a biologist so why would you ask her to define what a woman is? Sheesh.
So how long will this mismatch survive? KBJ might be looking for her own ‘Megxit’ sooner than even she thinks.
And even funnier is that Ketanji is married to a Boston Brahmin. She’s the descendant of slaves. Her white husband is 7th generation Harvard. Maybe that’s why she and her husband are a good match and have a good marriage? They’re both about bucking the norms to just be who they are. Theater kid, orator, ‘don’t fence me in’ judicial philosophy, etc. These are all lovely qualities that Ketanji has, but unfortunately she is simply not a match for ‘life’ on the Supreme Court. Unless the goal is to destroy and tear down.
*. Yep, it must have been surprising the royal family never came to dinner in their underwear. Shocking!
People like Jackson never resign. In addition to everything else, she believes she is the only Justice who is correct and the eight others are all incompetent fools..
Traditionally, Supreme Court Justices did not malign each others’ characters in opinions. Justice Jackson has abandoned that tradition, flat out insulting her colleagues. Becoming a footnote in the history of jurisprudence for such an accomplishment seems foolish. Yet Justice Jackson has pressed on.
This term she may no longer be accorded the graces extended during the inevitable growing pains associated with joining a court unlike any other. It is to the credit of Justice Kagan and Justice Sotomayor that they have distanced themselves by non-agreement. Justice Kagan is the great pragmatist of the court, looking for ways a decision might work or not work. And Justice Sotomayor is the historian of what might have been. Her impassioned dissents disclose what the law would have been had she had the votes to compel the Court to adopt her views.