Heated Words on the High Court

The Supreme Court’s tradition of civility on the bench is being tarnished by the attacks Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has launched against Justice Samuel Alito. The two justices exchanged heated words — in published opinions — in the aftermath of the high court’s ruling on colorblind voting districts. Justice Jackson, it seems, takes exception to the majority’s decision allowing Louisiana to move ahead, on an expedited basis, on a districting remap.Dissent, disagreement, and debate in and of themselves would not be newsworthy at America’s highest tribunal. They have been the sine qua non of a healthy judicial institution. Where this exchange between the two justices seems to go off the rails, though, is in the apparent questioning by Justice Jackson of the conservative justices’ motives in the redistricting dispute. She raises the specter of an “appearance of partiality.” Such an accusation strikes at the core of any judge’s jurisprudence. Every federal judge, upon acceding to the bench, swears to “faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me.” Federal judges swear, too, that they will “administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich,” a part of the oath that Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused her colleague Brett Kavanaugh of breaching.Justice Sotomayor, to her credit, subsequently apologized to Justice Kavanaugh for what amounted to an out-of-bounds criticism. Justice Jackson, though, seems to be warming to a role as a kind of gadfly for the court’s conservative majority. She appears, too, to see no need to confine herself to the legal questions at hand. “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,” she boasts. Justice Jackson’s dissent Monday to the court’s order in Callais v. Louisiana was one such “opportunity.” The majority, after deciding against race-based gerrymanders, opted to waive a traditional 32-day waiting period before issuing the final ruling to the lower court. To wait, Justice Alito wrote, would mean that the midterm elections in Louisiana would be “held under a map that has been held to be unconstitutional.”This logic cut no ice with Justice Jackson. She charged the majority with having “spawned chaos” in the Pelican State. She detected “a strong political undercurrent” in the majority’s moves after the opinion was issued, speaking of a court that “unshackles itself” from longtime “constraints” on partisan intervention. She alleged that for the majority, “principles give way to power.” Justice Alito calls this “a groundless and utterly irresponsible charge.”Justice Alito’s opinion goes on to ask: “what principle has the Court violated?” Should the high court’s 32-day waiting period “never be shortened even when there is good reason to do so,” he wonders. He questions, too, the logic of suggesting that the court “should never take any action that might unjustifiably be criticized as partisan.” Justice Alito concludes that “it is the dissent’s rhetoric that lacks restraint.”The Sun in 2022 endorsed Justice Jackson’s nomination to the high bench, despite our “ideological differences” with the jurist. We concluded that “we have little appetite” for a high court that lacks “ideological diversity.” There’s no shortage of that stripe of diversity on today’s court. Resorting to ad hominem criticism, or questioning the motives of one’s colleagues, though, brings to the bench an unwelcome note of partisanship and even immaturity.

Heated Words on the High Court

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