Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson accused the high court's conservative majority of hastening the "demise" of government institutions by handing President Donald Trump a huge victory in its decision on birthright citizenship.
In a 6-3 decision Friday, the court held that universal injunctions were improper and exceeded the power of the federal courts. In other words, lower courts must now "fight out" citizenship issues.
"Perhaps the degradation of our rule-of-law regime would happen anyway," Jackson wrote in a lengthy dissent. "But this Court's complicity in the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts, their rulings, and the law (as they interpret it) will surely hasten the downfall of governing institutions, enabling our collective demise."
Jackson continued, "At the very least, I lament that the majority is so caught up in minutiae of the Government’s self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot."
The conservative majority dismissed Jackson's condemnation, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett writing, "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. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary."