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In solo dissents this term, the justice accused the conservative majority of lawless bias. On the term’s last day, Justice Amy Coney Barrett fired back.
July 5, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ET
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote just five majority opinions in the Supreme Court term that ended last month, the fewest of any member of the court. But her voice resonated nonetheless, in an unusually large number of concurring and dissenting opinions, more than 20 in all.
Several of them warned that the court was taking lawless shortcuts, placing a judicial thumb on the scale in favor of President Trump and putting American democracy in peril. She called the majority’s opinion in the blockbuster case involving birthright citizenship, issued on the final day of the term, “an existential threat to the rule of law.”
Justice Jackson, 54, is the court’s newest member, having just concluded her third term. Other justices have said it took them years to find their footing, but Justice Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the court, quickly emerged as a forceful critic of her conservative colleagues and, lately, their approach to the Trump agenda.
Her opinions, sometimes joined by no other justice, have been the subject of scornful criticism from the right and have raised questions about her relationships with her fellow justices, including the other two members of its liberal wing.
“She’s breaking the fourth wall, speaking beyond the court,” said Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University. “She is alarmed at what the court is doing and is sounding that in a different register, one that is less concerned with the appearance of collegiality and more concerned with how the court appears to the public.”
Her slashing critiques sometimes seemed to test her colleagues’ patience, culminating in an uncharacteristic rebuke from Justice Amy Coney Barrett in the case arising from Mr. Trump’s effort to ban birthright citizenship. In that case, the majority sharply limited the power of district court judges to block presidential orders, even if they are patently unconstitutional.
