Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson spent this week on a media tour — not to discuss the weighty constitutional questions sitting on her desk, but to defend her night out at the Grammy Awards and promote her memoir.
Jackson appeared on "CBS Mornings" on Feb. 10 and ABC's "The View" on Feb. 11, where she defended attending the Grammy ceremony this month as a nominee for the audio version of her 2025 book "Lovely One." She did not win. The Dalai Lama took the award for best audio book, narration, and storytelling recording.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court still has not issued a ruling on President Trump's tariffs — a case argued back in November — and has decided only one of the other eight cases from that same oral arguments session. The court is currently in the middle of a four-week break from hearing arguments and issuing opinions.
The issue isn't that a Supreme Court justice attended an awards show. The issue is which awards show, and what happened there.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., laid it out plainly, according to USA Today: many attendees at the ceremony wore "ICE OUT" pins, and two award winners used their acceptance speeches to denounce the Trump administration's immigration enforcement. Blackburn called it:
"Such a brazenly political, anti-law enforcement event."
Jackson, seated in that audience, is part of the court currently deliberating a major case on presidential authority. The optics aren't complicated. A justice who will rule on the legality of the president's enforcement powers attended an event where enforcement of immigration law was treated as something to protest — accessorized with lapel pins, no less.
On "The View," Jackson waved it off. She described the evening in glowing terms:
"It was extraordinary. I'd never been to any kind of event like that before."
When pressed on the criticism, she framed attendance as part of her duties:
"Another part of the job, actually my job, is public outreach and education. I thought this is a great opportunity to highlight my work in this ways and to see what's happening at the Grammy's."
Public outreach. At the Grammys. While your pending caseload includes whether the president can use emergency powers to impose tariffs.
Co-host Whoopi Goldberg rushed to Jackson's defense, arguing that the justice "had no way of knowing what anyone's speech was going to be." Jackson agreed:
"That's right."
Fine. She didn't know what the speeches would say. But she also didn't leave. She didn't issue any statement distancing herself from the politicized spectacle. She went on two talk shows afterward and described the evening as "extraordinary."
On "CBS Mornings," Jackson addressed the still-pending tariffs case with the kind of reassurance that sounds reasonable until you think about it for more than a few seconds:
"The court is going through its process of deliberation. The American people expect for us to be thorough and clear in our determinations and sometimes that takes time."
Thoroughness is a virtue. But the court heard oral arguments on these tariffs in November. It's now mid-February. They've managed to resolve exactly one of the nine cases argued that month. The tariffs — which function as a centerpiece of the president's economic agenda and a major foreign policy tool — remain in legal limbo.
During those November arguments, many justices sounded skeptical that the president can tap emergency powers to sidestep the standard tariffs process. That skepticism, combined with the glacial pace, has fueled speculation that the court is in no rush to invalidate a sitting president's signature economic policy — preferring to let the clock run rather than issue a politically explosive ruling.
That's a choice. And it's a choice that has consequences for American businesses, trading partners, and the broader economy every single day it goes unresolved.
There's a deeper pattern worth noting. Jackson is not the first justice to have a public life outside the court. Justices write books. They give speeches. They attend events. None of that is inherently problematic.
But the left spent years demanding that conservative justices recuse themselves from cases based on the flimsiest associations — a flag on a neighbor's lawn, attendance at a legal conference, a friendship with someone tangentially connected to a litigant. The standard they set was that even the appearance of bias was disqualifying.
Now, a liberal justice attends an event where performers and attendees openly protested federal law enforcement, where anti-ICE sentiment was literally pinned to people's chests — and the defense is that she couldn't have predicted the speeches. The recusal industrial complex that targeted conservative justices has gone remarkably quiet.
Jackson also used her Grammy loss to charm the talk show audience:
"If you're going to lose, I mean, you might as well lose to the Dalai Lama, for sure."
It's a good line. It's the kind of thing that plays well on daytime television. And that's precisely the concern — a sitting Supreme Court justice who seems more comfortable on a talk show couch than behind the bench, building a media persona while cases of national significance collect dust.
Jackson described her Grammy attendance and media appearances as "public outreach and education." She called the criticism itself just:
"Part of the job."
But there's a difference between public engagement and a publicity tour. Promoting a young adult version of your memoir on "The View" while the country waits for a ruling on presidential trade authority isn't outreach. It's branding.
The Supreme Court's authority rests on the perception that its members are above the political fray — that they deliberate with care, speak through opinions, and let their work product do the talking. Every appearance on a daytime talk show, every photo op at an awards ceremony dripping with partisan signaling, chips away at that perception.
Jackson has every right to attend the Grammys. She has every right to go on television. But rights and wisdom aren't the same thing. The American people waiting on a tariffs ruling might prefer their justices spent February working — not explaining why losing to the Dalai Lama was actually kind of fun.
