Amy Coney Barrett Scorches Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Dissenting Opinion for ‘Embracing an Imperial Judiciary’

Justice Amy Coney Barrett scorched Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissenting opinion in a case where the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled on Friday that judges cannot abuse their powers by regularly issuing nationwide injunctions to halt an administration’s policies.

The court ruled 6-3 in the case known as Trump v. Casa, which dealt with lower courts issuing nationwide injunctions to block President Donald Trump’s executive order that ends birthright American citizenship for the United States-born children of illegal aliens.

“Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts,” the court ruled in the case, with Barrett writing for the majority while Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elana Kagan, and Jackson dissented.

Jackson, who concurred with Sotomayor’s dissent and wrote her own, was eviscerated by the court’s majority opinion for what they called her “embracing an imperial judiciary” with an argument that is “at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself.”

The court’s majority opinion states:

The principal dissent focuses on conventional legal terrain, like the Judiciary Act of 1789 and our cases on equity. JUSTICE JACKSON, however, chooses a startling line of attack that is tethered neither to these sources nor, frankly, to any doctrine whatsoever. Waving away attention to the limits on judicial power as a “mind-numbingly technical query,” she offers a vision of the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush. In her telling, the fundamental role of courts is to “order everyone (including the Executive) to follow the law—full stop.” And, she warns, if courts lack the power to “require the Executive to adhere to law universally,” courts will leave a “gash in the basic tenets of our founding charter that could turn out to be a mortal wound.” [Emphasis added]

Rhetoric aside, JUSTICE JACKSON’s position is difficult to pin down. She might be arguing that universal injunctions are appropriate—even required—whenever the defendant is part of the Executive Branch. If so, her position goes far beyond the mainstream defense of universal injunctions. As best we can tell, though, her argument is more extreme still, because its logic does not depend on the entry of a universal injunction: JUSTICE JACKSON appears to believe that the reasoning behind any court order demands “universal adherence,” at least where the Executive is concerned. In her law-declaring vision of the judicial function, a district court’s opinion is not just persuasive, but has the legal force of a judgment. Once a single district court deems executive conduct unlawful, it has stated what the law requires. And the Executive must conform to that view, ceasing its enforcement of the law against anyone, anywhere. [Emphasis added]

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. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary. [Emphasis added]

In concluding the majority’s opinion, Barrett writes, “JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: ‘[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.’ That goes for judges too.”

Jackson, in her dissent, accuses the court’s ruling of threatening the rule of law.

“My objective is to expose the core conceptual fallacy underlying the majority’s reasoning, which, to me, also tends to demonstrate why, and how, today’s ruling threatens the rule of law,” Jackson writes.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.