In most U.S. Supreme Court opinions, whether majority or dissent, the justices will break down their interpretation of the law to back their respective opinions or those of the group.
Very rarely will you see a justice interject personal feelings, or at least that was the case before Joe Biden-appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson took a seat on the bench.
She recently stated that she thinks her legal opinions are a chance to tell everyone what she thinks, coming off as more of a pundit than a jurist.
During a recent opinion, Jackson seemed to offer more personal opinion than legal doctrine, which drew the ire of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Barrett wrote, "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."
She went on, "We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary."
The left went nuts over the opinion, but they seemed to miss the meat of what Barrett was saying, and that was that Jackson seemed to be pushing Democratic Party talking points rather than a legal opinion, and that is a problem.
Jackson added a bit more fuel to this fire in a recent interview in which she warned that the conservative majority on the court keeps her up at night worrying about the “state of our democracy.”
If that line sounds familiar, it should, as it is a regular Democrat talking point ever since Trump was first elected in 2016.
She further stated, "I just feel 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.”
That is a problem -- a big problem-- as that is not the role of a Supreme Court justice. We only need your legal argument, not your personal feelings. You are a justice, not a talking head on TV.
Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley recently wrote in an op-ed for Fox News, calling out Jackson for her punditry and noting the manner in which the other members of the Court seem to be taking it.
He wrote, “Her colleagues have not entirely welcomed that sense of license. The histrionic and hyperbolic rhetoric has increased in Jackson's opinions, which at times portray her colleagues as abandoning not just the Constitution but democracy itself.”
The problem goes much deeper than just Jackson, as we have seen plenty of judges in the lower courts do the same thing, which Turley pointed out, stating, “She is not alone. Across the country, liberal judges have been adding their own commentary to decisions in order to condemn Trump, his supporters, and his policies.”
This is what the administration is speaking of when it talks about activist judges, and Trump has surely seen his fair share of them already during this second term. Every aspect of our government is broken at this point, and I am just not sure how we go about fixing it, since its depths now go to the country’s very core.
