In Mullin v. Friends of Ruidosa Church, the Supreme Court just lifted the injunction on the Administration’s effort to go forward with the completion of a border wall through the Big Bend region of West Texas. The issue should not be the policy merits. There are good-faith arguments against the wall in such areas. Indeed, outgoing Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) wrote an op-ed against the project. However, the sole question before the Court was the authority of a president to order the construction and use of statutory waivers to do so. Eight out of nine justices voted that “the Government is exceedingly likely to prevail on its argument that the District Court lacked jurisdiction.” Once again, the sole holdout was Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who did not explain her position.

In its unsigned five-page decision, the eight justices ruled that the 1996 immigration law gave the Homeland Security secretary wide discretion to waive environmental rules. There was no constitutional challenge. Instead, this is a straightforward statutory interpretation matter on whether Congress gave this discretion to the executive branch and whether that authority was then used in conformity with federal law.

Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem signed the first of three waivers over the Big Bend sector. Secretary Markwayne Mullin continued that policy by signing two additional waivers based on his determination that they were “necessary to ensure expeditious construction” of border barriers under IIRIRA §102(c)(1).

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone issued the injunction on October 2.

As shown by the eight-justice majority, it is hard to see how Judge Cardone, a George W. Bush nominee, thought that the high standard for this injunction was met. She seemed to delve into policy in finding that Congress likely never authorized waivers in a sector where crossings are so low. That is a judgment on the merits of the waiver that the justices clearly viewed as exceeding the authority of the courts in our system of the separation of powers.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only one who said she would have turned the administration down. She did not explain why.

Justice Jackson’s sole dissents have drawn considerable criticism not only from many experts but also from her conservative and liberal colleagues.

I have previously described some of Jackson’s jurisprudence as “chilling.”

In the injunction litigation in Trump v. CASA, Jackson seemed to go out of her way to echo the “democracy is dying” narrative of the far left in picking up on the “No Kings” theme.  She warned about drifting toward “a rule-of-kings governing system.”

She said that limiting the power of individual judges to freeze the entire federal government was “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.”

The “minutiae” dismissed by Jackson happen to be the statutory and constitutional authority of federal courts. It is the minutiae that distinguish the rule of law from mere judicial impulse.

Justice Barrett clearly had had enough with the self-aggrandizing rhetoric. She delivered a haymaker in writing that “JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: “[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.” Ibid. That goes for judges too.”

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.”

In other words, the danger to democracy is found in judges acting like kings. Barrett explained to her three liberal colleagues that “when a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”

Notably, in the calls to pack the Court with a liberal majority, politicians and pundits often point to Biden-appointee Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as the model. Jackson has been widely criticized for a radical jurisprudence that discards long-standing norms and doctrines. If that is the model for a new majority on the Court, the far left could well achieve its long agenda on radical changes to our constitutional system.

The sole dissent in this case only magnifies those concerns.

Jonathan Turley is the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.” He teaches a course on the Constitution and the Supreme Court.