Justice Amy Coney Barrett was called out on Saturday morning for her thin-skinned and personal response to a dissent written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Writing the 6-3 conservative majority opinion that handed the Donald Trump administration a win with its birthright citizenship ruling, Coney Barrett took a dismissive shot at Brown Jackson observations by 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."
She then added. “We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”
Appearing on MSNBC's "The Weekend," Slate legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern called Coney Barrett's personal attack "arrogant" and "out of bounds."
Addressing Brown Jackson's dissent, he told the hosts, "I think Jackson's blows clearly landed here, and Barrett responded with, what I do agree is a far too personal retort that accuses Justice Jackson of not really being smart enough, I think, to levy a strong criticism of her opinion. That's totally out of bounds, it's highly unusual, even when the justices disagree, they usually do so respectfully."
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"And here Barrett is going much further and I think the reason why is really obvious, right?" he continued. "Justice Jackson's dissent is one of the sharpest, fiercest, most blunt dissents we've ever seen. She is taking on the Supreme Court as an institution and the conservative super majority. It's one of several dissents she published this term where she accused the super majority on the right of bias toward the Trump administration, of surrendering the rule of law so that Trump can rule like a king."
"This is how the majority sees the country, that they really believe Trump should rule it with no limits and, you know, I think after this decision, it's kind of hard to argue with that, right?" he observed. "The majority sees a policy that is so patently unconstitutional and rather than understand that that's the emergency that courts need to address, it turns around and smacks down the lower courts and says, 'You went too far.'"
"So Jackson's criticism there was entirely appropriate and for Justice Barrett to act so wounded and respond so personally is really out of bounds, disrespectful and arrogant," he concluded.
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