Justice Amy Coney Barret criticized the dissent of her colleague, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
By Catholics for Catholics
In a rare scene, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett criticized her colleague’s dissent as “extreme” in the landmark birthright citizenship case in which the Supreme Court reduced lower court use of universal injunctions.
Barret criticized her colleague, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for her dissent opinion. She stunned seasoned bench watchers Friday with her blunt words, according to The New York Post.
“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,” wrote Barrett, the court’s second-newest justice, in a jaw-dropping rebuke of her colleague, the newest justice.
“We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.” It was Barrett who wrote the majority opinion in the case, the most significant on the docket in this term, which gave President Trump a big victory by limiting the power of district judges to block his actions.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the main dissent for the left flank of the high court, which Jackson united to. According to The Post, Jackson also penned a likeminded dissent that showed a heavy fixation on the potential practical ramifications of the 6-3 decision rather than grounding her argument in legal theory.
“It is not difficult to predict how this all ends. Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more,” Jackson wrote. “Quite unlike a rule-of-kings governing system, in a rule of law regime, nearly ‘[e]very act of government may be challenged by an appeal to law,’” Jackson wrote elsewhere. “At the very least, I lament that the majority is so caught up in the minutiae of the Government’s self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot.”
Barrett’s retort in her opinion was almost derisive: “Because analyzing the governing statute involves boring ‘legalese,’ [Jackson] seeks to answer ‘a far more basic question of enormous practical significance: May a federal court in the United States of America order the Executive to follow the law?’
“In other words, it is unnecessary to consider whether Congress has constrained the Judiciary; what matters is how the Judiciary may constrain the Executive. Justice Jackson would do well to heed her own admonition: ‘[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law,’” Barrett continued.
Trump Admin can ban birthright citizenship with Supreme Court ruling. pic.twitter.com/k9oZw6NV7n
— Catholics for Catholics 🇺🇲 (@CforCatholics) June 28, 2025
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