US Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has issued a rare public rebuke of the nation's highest court, declaring that it “can and should be better” following a series of controversial moves by its conservative supermajority.
Weeks after writing a solo dissent as the court effectively gutted a key section of the Voting Rights Act, Jackson—the court's newest member and fiercest liberal voice—delivered a stark warning about the risk of the court being perceived as political.
“Courts are apolitical, not supposed to be issuing rulings that are in the political realm,” she said on Monday at a conference hosted by the American Law Institute in Washington DC. “We have to be scrupulous about sticking to the principles and the rules that we apply in every case, and not look as though we’re doing something different in this kind of context.”
The court, where conservatives have held a six-justice majority since 2020, has faced questions over a series of emergency orders allowing Donald Trump's policies to take effect temporarily. Jackson warned of “real world consequences” from the court's rulings, adding: “No one really has a clear sense of why it’s happening or what the court’s reasoning is. So I just think we can and should be better.”
Jackson, nominated by Joe Biden in 2022, is one of the court's three liberal justices. Her conservative counterparts have repeatedly pushed back against suggestions that politics plays a role in the court's decisions. Chief Justice John Roberts insisted earlier this month that Supreme Court judges are not “political actors.”
The criticism comes amid rulings widely seen as benefiting Trump and his allies, including the overturning of federally protected abortion rights, granting presidential immunity for official acts, and the weakening of the Voting Rights Act. At Monday's event, Jackson pointed to her written dissent from last month, in which she argued against the court's decision requiring Louisiana to redraw its congressional map—a ruling that set the stage for a Republican blitz to redraw maps in southern states, challenging the influence of Black and other minority voters.
In her solo dissent, Jackson wrote that the court's “principles give way to power” and that the ruling had “spawned chaos.” Citing that dissent on Monday, she said the Supreme Court needs “to be very constrained.” She emphasized the importance of public perception, stating: “Public confidence is really all the judiciary has … Everyone believes the court system is outside the political sphere. I think that means it’s incumbent on us to do things, to act in ways that shore up public confidence.”
In response to Jackson's dissent, conservative Justice Samuel Alito called her arguments “groundless and utterly irresponsible,” asking: “What principle has the court violated? … The principle that we should never take any action that might unjustifiably be criticized as partisan?”
