I’d already mentioned this here – The Supreme Court Justices rated as to who talks the most at hearings & legal arguments. so now the NY Times chimes in – excerpts below but the whole article is worth reading.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote just five majority opinions in the Supreme Court term that ended last month, the fewest of any member of the court. But her voice resonated nonetheless, in an unusually large number of concurring and dissenting opinions, more than 20 in all.
Several of them warned that the court was taking lawless shortcuts, placing a judicial thumb on the scale in favor of President Trump and putting American democracy in peril. She called the majority’s opinion in the blockbuster case involving birthright citizenship, issued on the final day of the term, “an existential threat to the rule of law.”
Justice Jackson, 54, is the court’s newest member, having just concluded her third term. Other justices have said it took them years to find their footing, but Justice Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the court, quickly emerged as a forceful critic of her conservative colleagues and, lately, their approach to the Trump agenda.
Her opinions, sometimes joined by no other justice, have been the subject of scornful criticism from the right and have raised questions about her relationships with her fellow justices, including the other two members of its liberal wing.
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Her slashing critiques sometimes seemed to test her colleagues’ patience, culminating in an uncharacteristic rebuke from Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the case arising from Mr. Trump’s effort to ban birthright citizenship. In that case, the majority sharply limited the power of district court judges to block presidential orders, even if they are patently unconstitutional.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the principal dissent for the court’s three-member liberal wing, including Justices Jackson and Elena Kagan.
Justice Jackson added her own dissent, speaking only for herself. She said the majority imperiled the rule of law, creating “a zone of lawlessness within which the executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes.”
That prompted an extended response from Justice Barrett, the next most junior justice and the author of the majority opinion. It did not stint on condescension.
“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,” Justice Barrett wrote, in an opinion signed by all five of the other Republican appointees.
“The principal dissent focuses on conventional legal terrain,” Justice Barrett went on, referring to Justice Sotomayor’s opinion. “Justice Jackson, however, chooses a startling line of attack that is tethered neither to these sources nor, frankly, to any doctrine whatsoever.”
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Justice Jackson adjusted quickly to the Supreme Court. Other justices have said it took them years to get the hang of things.
“I was frightened to death for the first three years,” Justice Breyer said in a 2006 interview. Even Justice Louis D. Brandeis, a giant of the law who sat on the court from 1916 to 1939, needed time to find his footing. “So extraordinary an intellect as Brandeis said it took him four or five years to feel that he understood the jurisprudential problems of the court,” Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote of his friend and mentor.
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