Overview
- Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered a sharp public critique Thursday at the University of the District of Columbia law school, calling the court’s handling of emergency requests “enormously disruptive and potentially corrosive.”
- Hours before the lecture she handled an administration emergency application that seeks to let the government carry out rapid deportations to countries other than immigrants’ own.
- Jackson pointed to recent emergency rulings that narrowed the Education Department’s authority, canceled hundreds of millions in federal grants, and permitted race and language to factor into some immigration stops.
- She warned the emergency docket can become an end run around normal review by letting well-resourced parties jump ahead and urged the Court to give fuller, clearer explanations for emergency orders.
- Reporters noted optics concerns for the Court after Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh attended a White House state dinner for President Xi, a detail that Jackson’s timing and comments have made more salient for public perceptions of judicial independence.