Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson spoke at the American Law Institute and warned that the Supreme Court risks looking political after its handling of the Louisiana redistricting case under the Voting Rights Act.
KBJ argued the court must guard its public image, especially in election cases, because, as the AP reported, Americans expect judges to stand apart from partisan fights.
She spoke after writing a solo dissent from the court’s decision allowing Louisiana to move quickly to use new maps after the court’s conservative majority struck down a majority-Black district and weakened the Voting Rights Act.
“Public confidence is really all the judiciary has,” she said at a talk before the American Law Institute in Washington, D.C.
“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,” she said.
Polling has shown public trust in the Supreme Court at historic lows in recent years, and Chief Justice John Roberts has separately bemoaned a perception that the justices are “political actors,” calling it a misunderstanding.
That's a fair-sounding statement; nobody wants the highest court in America to look like a cable news panel wearing matching robes.
Unfortunately, despite a fair-sounding message, the problem comes from the messenger. Jackson has become the court's loudest progressive voice, and subtlety doesn't appear to be her preferred instrument.
While the justice did not address the substance of the ruling in Louisiana v Callais, which put limits on protections for minority voters under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Jackson did express concern about the rare move to immediately certify the ruling over the objection of a group of black Louisiana voters who said they were considering a petition for rehearing of the case.
She suggested that the court's move - with no explanation and over a dissent she joined written by Justice Elena Kagan - may have looked like the justices taking sides. The practical impact has been the elimination of at least one majority-black district that has been represented by Democrats.
"The parties who were asking us to expedite the judgment [state Republicans] were doing so because they were embroiled in a political dispute over whether or not to apply the court's ruling in the context of an ongoing election. ...The parties who came to us said, 'Please alter your rules, so that we can essentially have an advantage in the context of this political dispute.' What I thought is that that should not be something that we should do," Jackson said, "because it would look as though we were doing something unusual...to advantage this political party...that was asking us for political reasons to do it."
Jackson accused the court of creating election confusion. Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, answered with unusual force and called parts of her dissent “baseless and insulting,” as shared by Yahoo News.
Justice Samuel Alito tore into Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s lone dissent in a high-stakes Louisiana redistricting dispute on Monday, calling her arguments "baseless and insulting" after the Supreme Court decided to fast-track implementing its recent redistricting ruling ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Alito used a concurring opinion, joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, to directly rebuke Jackson, saying her "dissent in this suit levels charges that cannot go unanswered."
"The dissent goes on to claim that our decision represents an unprincipled use of power," Alito wrote, adding that that was a "groundless and utterly irresponsible charge."
KBJ's complaint focused on timing and process, saying the court should've waited before issuing its order because election-year moves feed the belief that justices pick sides. Yet her public remarks also fed the same beast she claims to fear. A justice can raise legal concerns inside an opinion and sharply dissent, but when a justice takes grievances into a public speech days later, the line between legal argument and political performance grows blurry. And fast.
President Joe Biden nominated Jackson in 2022 after pledging to choose a black woman for the Supreme Court. After the confirmation, she became the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, becoming a historic milestone Democrats celebrated with full orchestra volume.
Her confirmation hearing also produced the now-infamous exchange with Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who asked her to define the word “woman.” Jackson replied that because she wasn't a biologist, she couldn't.
A few years later, that answer still follows her because it captured the strange evasions modern progressivism often demands from otherwise supposedly intelligent people.
Jackson's defenders see courage in her dissents, while critics see an activist temperament dressed in judicial language. Both sides can agree on one point: she doesn't simply fade into the marble. Her writing often carries the tone of someone not merely disagreeing with colleagues but warning the country about them.
For progressives, she offers courtroom resistance; for conservatives, she sounds like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) with a law degree and lifetime tenure.
Chief Justice John Roberts has often defended the court's independence and rejected the idea that justices should be sorted like political mascots. Jackson now says she wants the same institutional confidence.
Fine. But institutional confidence doesn't grow when justices hint that colleagues may be damaging the court whenever outcomes offend progressive sensibilities.
Or, to put it another way, when the progressives catch a case of the vapors.
If the court must look neutral, then every justice bears some duty to avoid turning legal disagreements into a public relations campaign.
The Louisiana dispute involved congressional districts, race, the Voting Rights Act, and the Constitution. Serious lawyers can argue about all of it without pretending one side owns virtue and the other side sneaks around democracy in a trench coat.
Jackson's comments would land better if they carried less theatrical alarm. Her colleagues didn't lose their right to rule because she disliked the result.
The court didn't become partisan because the conservative majority disagreed with the progressive minority.
Jackson wants Americans to believe the court stands above politics, and she could help by sounding less like a political activist disappointed by a vote count.
The AOC of jurisprudence may have thoughts about court neutrality, but the mirror still sits nearby.
Jackson is afraid to sit in front of it.
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