Since her appointment by President Joe Biden, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has quickly developed a radical and chilling jurisprudence. Her often sole dissents and accusatory rhetoric have drawn not just the ire of her conservative colleagues but her liberal colleagues. This week, that tension deepened with a stinging rebuke from Justice Samuel Alito (joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch).
At issue is the finalization of the Court’s opinion in Louisiana v. Callais, where the Court ruled 6-3 to ban racial gerrymandering. The Court reaffirmed the use of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to ban intentional racial discrimination in the design of voting districts, but effectively found many districts to be unconstitutional in their current form.
There is no reason why the decision should not be finalized except for a blatantly partisan effort to protect the Democrats from losing seats in the midterm elections. After all, if these districts are unconstitutional, why should states guarantee that voters are given representatives chosen free of racial discriminatory preferences?
That question is even more confusing given the long wait for this opinion. Not only was the case reargued, but there were growing complaints about the delay in releasing the opinion.
Complaints increased after a recent book allegedly reported that Justice Elena Kagan had a vocal confrontation with her colleague, former Justice Stephen Breyer, over his push to release the dissents in Dobbs after the leaking of that opinion. Breyer reportedly agreed with Chief Justice John Roberts that the conservative justices were facing increased death threats due to the delay. Kagan allegedly wanted to further delay the release.
In the Callais decision, the delay was curious since there were six solid votes for the majority and not more of a fracturing of opinions. Indeed, the majority opinion’s references to the Kagan dissent are relatively brief. Nevertheless, the delay has made it very difficult for states to make changes. A few are moving to delay their primaries or draw new maps under extremely tight calendars.
Regardless of the delay, there is no cognizable or principled reason to withhold the opinion to preserve unconstitutional districts. The case has already been on the docket for an unusually long time due to a reargument.
In its one-paragraph order, the court acknowledged that the Supreme Court’s clerk normally waits 32 days after a decision to send a copy of the opinion and the judgment to the lower court. However, it noted that the defenders of the challenged districts had “not expressed any intent to ask this Court to reconsider its judgment.” Conversely, the other parties raised the need for states to address the impact of the ruling with the approaching elections.
Jackson stood alone in demanding that the unconstitutional districts be effectively preserved for the purposes of this election — guaranteeing Democratic seats in the midterm that could be lost in non-racially discriminatory districts. Neither Kagan nor Justice Sonia Sotomayor would join her in the dissent, despite dissenting from the Callais decision itself.
However, it was her language again that drew the attention of her colleagues.
Justice Jackson lambasted the court’s ruling “has spawned chaos in the State of Louisiana.” In an Orwellian twist, Jackson suggested that others were playing politics as she sought to effectively protect unconstitutional Democratic districts. She suggested that the case exposed “a strong political undercurrent.”
In arguably the most insulting line, she lectured her colleagues that this case “unfolds in the midst of an ongoing statewide election, against the backdrop of a pitched redistricting battle among state governments that appear to be acting as proxies for their favored political parties.”
She further said that, rather than avoid “the appearance of partiality,” the Court’s action “is tantamount to an approval of Louisiana’s rush to pause the ongoing election in order to pass a new map.”
Justice Alito had had enough. He noted that her reliance on the 32-day period was a “trivial” objection that put form above substance since no party had asked for reconsideration. It would be waiting for 32 days for no purpose, while the other parties had stated a reasonable and pressing need to finalize the opinion.
He chastised Jackson for a dissent that “lacks restraint.” He denounced the dissent as making “baseless and insulting” claims. He particularly objected to the charge that her colleagues were engaging in an unprincipled use of power” as a groundless and utterly irresponsible charge.”
What is even more chilling than Jackson’s jurisprudence is the fact that she is often cited as the model for Democrats seeking to pack the Court with an instant majority if they retake power. This and other Jackson dissents show why Democrats are so confident that packing the Court will yield lasting control of the government.
Jackson recently told ABC News 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.” For some of her colleagues, that cathartic benefit is coming at too high a cost for the Court.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
This column appeared on Fox.com
Goomy Goo Goo
.
STOP USING THESE WORDS: Conservative and Liberal
As description of the Judicial Branches of Government. they have become inappropriate and contextually deceptive.
Try what we are really seeing:
Constructionist and Activist.
What are they?
Constructionist means judicial restraint – judges should limit their role to applying the law as written in the context when written, without inferring broader implications.
Activists are basically positioning written law as irrelevant. Judicial Activism is self-aggrandizing power consumption based on the assumed rights to 1) Interpret the law any way “I” want to. 2) Write all law the way “I” believe it should be 3) Execute law “I” have, or just assert “I” have written and “I” believe should be – all the way to the guillotine if possible. If you do not subjugate yourself to “my” power, “my” will, “I” will dox your residence and promote the violent attacks and demonstrations thereon – not just to you, but to your families – as illustrated with the Kavanaugh assassination attempt.
This is obviously true all of the way from the magistrate level through SCOTUS in the “judicial branch”
Stated simply, democracy of Legislature, Executive, Judicial with balance of power is GONE. This is NOT about rage. It is about tyranny through violence. Rage is nothing more than a propaganda tactic.
If you need a concrete example of promotion of violence, it is not hidden in the Brownshirt clubhouse domains of antifa, BLM, “no kings”, “May Day” as funded and supported by .\organizations financially created and supported to destroy democracy and assume power such as Singham and Soros. . . . It is on display by the Minority Speaker of the House Hakeem Jeffries at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters located in Washington, D.C. – where he unveiled a picture of himself with a face of pride and power as POTUS brains are blown out either by him or someone with him doing so.
Take a look:
https://static.politifact.com/CACHE/images/politifact/photos/Hakeem_Jeffries_maximum_warfare_sign_4-22-26_AP/9c9260571e8c09520b781cb072c52aef.jpg
Power as it exists in America:
https://pasteimg.com/image/thetreeofjustice.Km44m
Sure but KBJ isn’t an activist, that would require a brain. She’s a bot.
Another indication that Alioto will retire after this term and become a senior judge, effectively a 7th Conservative on the court but without a vote
Seizing Black Districts:
The Optics Step By Step
Polls and special elections suggest congressional Republicans could suffer a midterm blow-out.
Republicans embark on redistricting ahead of next census. But Democrats redistrict as well, negating Republican gains!
Then suddenly SCOTUS rescues Republicans. By letting them seize Black congressional districts in the South.
Justice Jackson has the fortitude to call it like it is: ‘A naked power grab disguised as constitutional whatever’. ‘A perversely cynical argument where White Republicans are victims’.
An enraged Johnathan Turley devotes 3 columns to demonizing Justice Jackson. Suggesting over and over she really doesn’t belong on the court. She’s a bitter Black radical incapable of grasping Justice Alito’s enlightened views.
And speaking of Justice Alito, what a victim he is! Being forced to work with an unqualified Black woman. And she’s only there because Biden ‘wanted’ a Black woman!
Turley’s far-right readers comment with increasing rage. Railing at Jackson for being so mouthy. Curiously they sound like White southerners from a Jim Crow mob. Ornery small towners determined to put a Black woman in her place.
But Turley readers aren’t racists. No, no, no, no!!!! They deeply admire the two Toms: Sowell and Clarence.
Anonymous trolls against SCOTUS, but racially determined districts favoring any racial minority, is blatantly unconstitutional. Smart objective future commentary will excoriate the racially motivated opinion of this rogue judge.
Sorry but the blacks don’t belong to you anymore.
You’re the one enraged you dopey commie.
I have read some partisan political party diatribe before, but this is definitely extremist. If redisticting is Unconstitional ,then it is so for both parties be they democrat or republican. Any redistricting based on race by either Party is there void. If repubilcans have engaged in redistributing by race this must be challanged, rejected and overturned. Ditto democrats. I am neither democrat nor republican.
Your comments lack all logical and mental scrutiny and do not persuade. On the contrary, they exhabit and unveil a position prizewinning author Leor Zmigrod wrote about her recent book, The Ideological Brain. Zmigrod’s book explores extreme ideologies, and her career has been spent finding these correlations. Zmigrod argues four principal factors that correlate with someone holding extreme ideological beliefs ,being: Cognitive rigidity; “emotional impulsivity” or volatility; the next two markers of extremism are invisible being two neurobiological aspects of a person’s brain that correlate with an increased likelihood of extremism. The first centers on the amygdala, and the second neurobiological aspect of extreme ideology is related to our “more sophisticated decision-making and rationality,” which is found in the prefrontal cortex.
You persuade few. You transmit disbelief ans sceptism.
Wolfgang O
u won’t pass it, in violation of the Professor’s instructions, silly troll