{"id":166845,"date":"2025-10-04T22:24:44","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T22:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/justice-ketanji-brown-jackson-is-trying-to-warn-us-about-something-are-we-listening-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T22:24:44","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T22:24:44","slug":"justice-ketanji-brown-jackson-is-trying-to-warn-us-about-something-are-we-listening-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/justice-ketanji-brown-jackson-is-trying-to-warn-us-about-something-are-we-listening-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is trying to warn us about something. Are we listening? – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jackson enters her fourth year on the supreme court on Monday. As its fiercest liberal voice wary of Trump\u2019s growing power, she faces an intense battle ahead
Her sharpest words were not in the body of her opinion. They were tucked away in a footnote.
That subtle placement <\/strong>speaks volumes about Ketanji Brown Jackson, the supreme court<\/a>\u2019s newest member and already its fiercest liberal voice.
The footnote in question can be found in Trump v Casa<\/a>, the June ruling that gave a big boost to Donald Trump by clipping the wings of federal judges and limiting their use of nationwide injunctions to block the president\u2019s worst excesses.
Over 21 pages of taut dissent against Casa, Jackson decried the 6-3 ruling as \u201can existential threat to the rule of law\u201d and a \u201csad day for America\u201d. The ruling was \u201cprofoundly dangerous\u201d, she wrote, because it gives Trump permission \u201cto wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate\u201d.
Looking ahead, she added that the decision would \u201csurely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise\u201d.
This is strong medicine. But then there is footnote No 5, which takes her dissent to another level entirely.
In it, she cites The Dual State<\/a> by Ernst Fraenkel, a German Jewish labor lawyer who fled the Nazis in 1938. Fraenkel\u2019s book analysed how the Nazis had created two coexistent legal systems.
There was the normative one that kept the economy of Germany running as usual. And then there was the separate legal system that operated alongside it, in which anyone deemed an enemy of the regime was stripped of all rights and subjected to arbitrary violence.
In the footnote, Jackson quotes The Dual States\u2019s description of the way unchecked power is incompatible with the rule of law:
See E Fraenkel, The Dual State, pp xiii, 3, 71 (1941) (describing the way in which the creation of a \u2018Prerogative State\u2019 where the Executive \u2018exercises unlimited arbitrariness \u2026 unchecked by any legal guarantees\u2019 is incompatible with the rule of law)
The footnote is three and a half lines of small print. But its import is booming.
By citing Fraenkel\u2019s work, the justice is drawing a parallel between the drift in jurisprudence that is taking place under the combined actions of Trump and the supreme court, and the legal structure of Nazi Germany.
Aziz Huq, a law professor at the University of Chicago, has studied The Dual State and wrote about it in the Atlantic<\/a> a month before the Casa decision came down. Pointing to Jackson\u2019s footnote, he said that it was clearly charged.
\u201cIt\u2019s hard not to see that as a kind of warning,\u201d he said.
On Monday, the nine justices of the US\u2019s top court will assemble at the start of a new judicial term. They will share the usual niceties, make congenial small talk, then get down to business.
It will be a tough time for Jackson, who has carved out a role as the \u201cgreat dissenter\u201d<\/a> and has been challenging the conservative bloc that now controls the court.
Outnumbered and outgunned by the rightwing supermajority, she and her two other liberal colleagues have had to watch from the sidelines as critical constitutional laws that have been settled for half a century have been torn up by the very court on which they sit.
So far, the list of casualties includes the right to an abortion<\/a>, affirmative action<\/a>, environmental protections, voting rights and much more.
Over the summer, the majority has also supercharged its shadow docket, in a series of temporary emergency decisions that have overturned lower court rulings and handed Trump almost everything he wants. That includes the ability to mass-fire<\/a> federal employees, summarily deport<\/a> migrants to war-torn countries, withhold billions of dollars in funds already approved by Congress and more.
The liberal justices have granted us rare glimpses into the hardship of their working lives. Last year, Sonia Sotomayor<\/a> told an audience at Harvard that there were days after the announcement of a ruling when she retreated to her office, closed the door and cried.
Asked about her colleague\u2019s mournful behavior a few weeks later, Elena Kagan<\/a> said: \u201cI\u2019m not much of a crier. I\u2019m more of a wall-slammer.\u201d
Jackson, who is 55, has studiously restrained herself in public. In recent book readings and talks she has come across as invariably cheerful and upbeat.
She has reserved her evident frustrations \u2013 about the current state of the US, its presidency and its top court \u2013 exclusively for her dissents. Of which there have been many.
Last term, Jackson wrote 10 dissents, more than any other justice including the ever vociferous far-right Clarence Thomas with nine. In her dissents, Jackson has piercingly criticised the court under the chief justice, John Roberts, for undermining the US\u2019s foundations<\/a> as a country of rules: no one is above the law and everyone has equal access to justice.
In addition to her most searing writing in the Trump v Casa case, with its Fraenkel footnote, there have been a stream of other pointed dissents. In July, she castigated<\/a> the court\u2019s decision to allow Trump to go ahead with mass firings of federal workers, saying that it was \u201cthe wrong decision at the wrong moment\u201d.
In August, she lamented<\/a> the decision by Roberts and his fellow rightwingers to allow Trump to cut almost $800m in federal health grants. She said the majority \u201cbends over backward to accommodate\u201d the administration\u2019s wishes.
Like Huq, Franita Tolson, dean of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, sees Jackson\u2019s dissents as sending a message. She is speaking directly to the American people, as well as to lower court judges who will have to interpret and apply the supreme court\u2019s rulings going forward.
\u201cIt is a warning,\u201d Tolson said. \u201cShe is warning us about the state of our democracy, about threats to the rule of law. There\u2019s a lot of unfair criticism, but she\u2019s consistent. She believes what she believes, and she says it bravely.\u201d
The billion-dollar question is: amid all the noise, will Jackson\u2019s message be heard?
Jackson has paid a heavy price for sticking her neck so high above the parapet. She has been scoffed at for somehow stepping outside normal supreme court decorum by speaking out so forcefully.
Some of the most caustic attacks have come from her own fellow justices on the right. The most scathing rebuke was made by Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, who disdainfully dismissed<\/a> Jackson\u2019s dissent in Trump v Casa as being untethered to conventional legal thinking or \u201cfrankly, to any doctrine whatsoever\u201d.
The comment must have stung. But Jackson has been accustomed to being criticised and maligned ever since she was a child.
In her memoir Lovely One<\/a> \u2013 <\/strong>the title is a translation of her African name, Ketanji Onyika <\/strong>\u2013<\/strong> she recalls as a teenager asking her grandmother: \u201cWhy do they think just because I\u2019m Black I\u2019m going to steal from them?\u201d
Her grandmother replied: \u201cGuard your spirit, Ketanji. To dwell on the unfairness of life is to be devoured by it.\u201d
She has kept that advice close as she has risen up the judicial ladder. \u201cI rejected self-doubt and self-loathing,\u201d she writes. \u201cInstead I chose possibility. I chose purpose.\u201d
She has needed such personal armor. A year into her tenancy on the supreme court, she was targeted by Charlie Kirk<\/a>, the rightwing activist who was murdered last month, as one of four prominent Black women whom he denigrated as \u201caffirmative-action picks\u201d.
\u201cYou do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person\u2019s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously,\u201d he said on his podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show.
The attacks coming at Jackson from fellow justices on the conservative wing of the supreme court have not been tainted with such overt racism. But some of the brickbats thrown at her have been bruising.
Barrett\u2019s riposte to Jackson in the Casa case was dripping with condescension. \u201cWe will not dwell on Justice Jackson\u2019s argument,\u201d Barrett wrote in her majority opinion.
She slammed Jackson\u2019s dissent as being at odds with more than 200 years of precedent, \u201cnot to mention the Constitution itself\u201d. She went on to accuse her of embracing \u201can imperial judiciary\u201d.
Barrett\u2019s criticism was rooted in a textual approach to the law in which judgments are made up-close and line by line. Jackson, by contrast, is stretching for the bigger picture: she is standing back, widening the frame, and seeking to capture the peril of this singularly dangerous moment.
The clash between the two justices raises questions. At a time when democracy and adherence to the rule of law is being tested to the breaking point, when the supreme court is under more pressure to safeguard democracy than at any time in recent history, is there a place for decorum? And if there is, who is breaching it?
Is it the justice who is warning about the threat posed by an authoritarian-minded president? Or is it her peers who control the court, whom she argues are emboldening him?
Jackson\u2019s determination to sound the alarm can be traced in part to her personal history. She was born in Washington DC on 14 September 1970, just a few years after the civil rights movement achieved its crowning glories: the 1964 Civil Rights Act that ended southern segregation, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act that ensured access to the ballot box for African Americans.
In her memoir, Jackson recalls growing up in Miami as the \u201conly dark-skinned girl in rooms full of white kids\u201d. Hard work and success in the high school debating team helped her walk into those rooms \u201cwith my head held high\u201d.
In her letter of application to Harvard (she was accepted as an undergraduate and went on to study at Harvard Law School), she said her dream was to become \u201cthe first Black, female supreme court justice to appear on a Broadway stage\u201d.
Audacious perhaps, but she did both. She joined the court as its first Black female justice in June 2022, and in December made a one-night guest appearance in the Broadway musical & Juliet.
In Lovely One, she describes how she imbibed fundamental legal principles from the former supreme court justice Stephen Breyer, for whom she clerked (it was his seat on the court that she later assumed). He taught her about the importance of seeing legal theory not as a thing in itself, but as part of the great American experiment, with its commitment to government by and for the people and its rejection of monarchs and dictators.
Jackson also articulates her sense of responsibility, as a Black woman standing on the shoulders of those who came before her, to protect the achievements of the civil rights struggle. As she noted the day after she was confirmed as a justice in her speech<\/a> on the south lawn of the White House: \u201cIn my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the supreme court of the United States.\u201d
\u201cShe understands the assignment,\u201d said Tolson, the USC School of Law dean. \u201cShe understands that she is standing on a legacy that is built on a constitution that works for everybody, not just some people.\u201d
That assignment will be tougher than ever as Jackson enters her fourth year on the court on Monday. The nine-month term that lies ahead has the potential to profoundly affect the state of American democracy and the extent of presidential power.
Enormous questions are on the docket, including whether Trump gets away with scrapping birthright citizenship<\/a> and other blatantly unconstitutional moves. At stake are the future of Trump\u2019s tariffs<\/a>, the fate of hundreds of thousands of people facing deportation and similar numbers of federal workers who could lose their jobs, and the independence of the Federal Reserve<\/a>.
Voting rights are also on the line. Two cases coming<\/a> before<\/a> the justices have the potential to gut the final vestiges of the Voting Rights Act, eviscerating one of those crowning glories of the civil rights movement without which Jackson might not have hoped to climb to the top.
The spotlight will be intense. The consequences will be immense.
\u201cShe\u2019s been preparing for this moment,\u201d Tolson said, anticipating further poignant Jackson dissents in the months to come.
\u201cThere\u2019s a sadness to her dissents,\u201d she added. \u201cA sadness about where we are, a reflection of our politics. But there\u2019s also a resolve. That we don\u2019t have to be like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Jackson enters her fourth year on the supreme court on Monday. As its fiercest liberal voice wary of Trump\u2019s growing power, she faces an intense battle aheadHer sharpest words were not in the body of her opinion. They were tucked away in a footnote.That subtle placement speaks volumes about Ketanji Brown Jackson, the supreme court\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":166846,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}