Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson raised concerns about her conservative colleagues’ use of emergency powers to benefit the Trump administration during a Monday (April 13) lecture at Yale Law School.
According to The Associated Press, Jackson spoke for nearly an hour, delivering an assessment of roughly two dozen court orders issued by her conservative Supreme Court colleagues last year.
These orders, Jackson said, allowed President Donald Trump to swiftly implement the policies of his agenda, such as rampant changes to immigration and steep funding cuts to federal agencies, even after lower courts already found they were illegal.
“The president of the United States, though he may be harmed in an abstract way, he certainly isn’t harmed if what he wants to do is illegal,” said Jackson during a question-and-answer session with Dean of Yale Law School, Cristina Rodriguez. Jackson further commented on the court’s history of reluctance to step into cases early, noting that it has become “noticeably less restrained” in recent years, especially with controversial matters.
While Jackson is the most recent justice to speak out against these orders, she is not the only one. Just last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke at a University of Alabama event with a similar rebuke of her conservative colleagues’ approach, per the AP, calling the increase in emergency appeals by the Trump administration “unprecedented in the court’s history.”
Last month, Jackson criticized the emergency orders during a court hearing in a standoff with fellow Justice Brett Kavanaugh, accusing him and the other justices who repeatedly sided with the president of doing a disservice to both the court and the country.
“The administration is making new policy ... and then insisting the new policy take effect immediately, before the challenge is decided,” Jackson said in last month’s hearing.
“This uptick in the court’s willingness to get involved in cases on the emergency docket is a real unfortunate problem.”
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