Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s passionate dissent in the birthright citizenship case appeared to strike a nerve with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who used three pages of the majority opinion to chide her liberal colleague’s legal argument.
On Friday, the court released its decision in a case brought by President Donald Trump seeking to expand his executive authority by limiting the power of federal judges.
Barrett, joined by the five conservative justices, authored the court’s main opinion agreeing to narrow judges’ ability to issue nationwide blocks on Trump’s executive orders. Jackson authored a concurring dissent, accusing the majority of hastening “the downfall of our governmental institutions.”
The liberal justice of the court accused the majority of being “so caught up in minutiae of the Government’s self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot.”
Barrett seemingly did not care for Jackson’s sharp admonishment of the court and spent several pages dismissing Jackson’s argument as a “startling line of attack” with no legal precedent and “many problems.”
“The principal dissent focuses on conventional legal terrain, like the Judiciary Act of 1789 and our cases on equity,” Barrett wrote, referring to Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s main dissenting opinion.
“Justice Jackson, however, chooses a startling line of attack that is tethered neither to these sources nor, frankly, to any doctrine whatsoever,” Barrett added.
For multiple paragraphs, Barrett brushed off her colleague’s fiery dissent as illogical.
“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,” Barrett wrote, before spending another page discussing Jackson's dissent.
Barrett, a conservative who was appointed by Trump in 2020, has occasionally toed the line between the conservative wing and the liberal wing of the court, earning ire from Trump supporters. But her scathing takedown of Jackson’s dissent was an eye-opening reminder of where her loyalty lies.
“Justice Jackson would do well to heed her own admonition: ‘[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.’”
Jackson, a liberal appointed by former president Joe Biden in 2022, expressed intense opposition to the court’s decision on Friday, believing it to be “destructive,” “perverse,” and “wrong.” Jackson claimed that the decision would embolden the executive to act more as a monarchy than a democracy.
“A Martian arriving here from another planet would see these circumstances and surely wonder: ‘what good is the Constitution, then?’” Jackson said in her dissent.
It’s not uncommon for justices to display their passion for a certain issue in opinions and dissents. It’s become standard to find justices sharply disagreeing with one another in written decisions.
But Barrett’s relentless attack and Jackson’s heated dissent was even surprising to some people online.
Republican Representative Dan Crenshaw wrote “Wow” in response to Barrett’s opinion, saying she “slapped down” Jackson’s credibility.
Former vice president Mike Pence called Barrett’s rebuke “brilliant.”
“Boy, is it scorched Earth,” Fox News correspondent Shannon Bream said of Jackson’s dissent.
“Justice Barrett’s brutal takedown of the dissent authored by Justice Jackson is something one wouldn’t have predicted from oral arguments,” Fox News host Laura Ingraham said.
