When Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was nominated by then-President Joe Biden, I certainly had questions about her qualifications and her past, but I was hoping that she would work out.
I always hope that judicial nominations, regardless of who is making them, are about justice and the Constitution, not about an agenda. I never expect a liberal justice to cross the ideological aisle, but I want to see them fairly apply the law.
Biden’s judicial nominees have been characterized by track records of serving more as activists than jurists, and sadly, Jackson is now proving to be the same, at least in my opinion.
When a SCOTUS ruling comes down, we expect the justices to explain their interpretation of the law in both their dissents and majority opinions.
What we do not want to see is personal feelings added into the mix, as those are supposed to be removed from the equation.
Jackson has not only been unable to do that, but she has justified the fact, and she has also been applauded by the media for her approach.
In defending her authored opinions and dissents, Jackson has stated, "I just feel that I have a wonderful opportunity to tell people in my opinions how I feel about the issues, and that's what I try to do.”
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration has the power to slash federal grants awarded on the basis of DEI-related factors.
Now, this was not a total victory for Trump in that the decision only blocked a lower-level court ruling that prevented the president from making the cuts, but it is still a win for now.
The reason the court overrode the lower court ruling was that, once again, it did not have jurisdiction in case at issue Even so, I was shocked that the Court issued this ruling, considering the existence of law laws protecting federal funding once it is approved by Congress.
In Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s majority opinion, she wrote, "As today’s order states, the District Court likely lacked jurisdiction to hear challenges to the grant terminations, which belong in the Court of Federal Claims.”
In past cases, we have seen the Supreme Court overturn rulings for this very reason, only for such decisions to be reinforced once the underlying case is filed in the proper court. That, however, mattered little to Jackson, who went nuclear in her dissent.
She openly accused the conservative side of the bench of pushing Trump’s agenda, stating, "This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.”
The one constitutional law expert I respect in the mainstream media, Jonathan Turley, sees this exactly as I do, stating, "The histrionic and hyperbolic rhetoric has increased in Jackson's opinions, which at times portray her colleagues as abandoning not just the Constitution but democracy itself.”
The fact that she seems more worried about Trump winning than the law being fairly applied is very concerning to me, especially considering that the broader issue of the legality of this type of funding is clearly still open. Jackson should have been upset with the lower court taking the case when it did not have proper jurisdiction. Had the matter been brought to the proper venue in the first place, the Court would have likely upheld the ruling against the administration.
