Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to dissent in a case that broke in President Trump's favor, underscoring her outlier status on the Supreme Court.
The court's newest member has shown "judicial abandon," law professor Jonathan Turley said in response to her latest free-wheeling dissent.
"This is part of a signature of what's becoming a type of judicial abandon that Jackson has towards the power of these courts," Turley told Fox and Friends.
The Supreme Court's 8-1 ruling lifted a lower court injunction that blocked Trump from laying off federal workers. The majority was sending a message to lower courts to rein themselves in, Turley said.
"This is six months of delay. It could have been much longer," he said. "The court is signaling, ‘We’re going to be on you very quickly if you continue to do these kinds of orders.’"
"This is another shot across the bow to lower courts," Turley said. "They’ve got to knock this off. They've got to stop with these injunctions."
Jackson was the only one to dissent, and she wasn't shy about criticizing her colleagues over what she saw as their readiness to please Trump.
"For some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation," she wrote. "In my view, this decision is not only truly unfortunate but also hubristic and senseless."
Liberal Sonia Sotomayor, a normally reliable anti-Trump voice on the court, signaled that she would withhold judgment of Trump's plans until they are formally presented.
"On this occasion, Jackson is alone," he told Fox and Friends. "She couldn’t even get Justice Sotomayor to sign on to this dissent," Turley said.
Jackson has begun to draw attention for scorching, polemical opinions in cases that turn out in President Trump's favor. Critics of her writings say they read like undergraduate essays, offering up sweeping arguments couched in glib rhetoric.
Her undisciplined approach has brought stinging criticism from her own colleagues on the bench. In a widely publicized clash, Amy Coney Barrett mocked Jackson' sweeping embrace of judicial supremacy and her indifference to the work of legal analysis, which Jackson dismissed as "legalese."
“We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary,” Barrett wrote.
It has been observed that Jackson is by far the most talkative justice during oral arguments. She's clearly very opinionated, and that's fine, but maybe she would have fit in better at CNN or MSNBC.
