Tag: Ketanji Brown Jackson

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Donald Trump Elections Kamala Harris Supreme Court

Ketanji Brown Jackson Says She’s ‘Prepared’ If The 2024 Election Winds Up Before The Supreme Court

If, as expected, the 2024 election winds up being close, the results may wind up in front of the United States Supreme Court, which would then be forced to rule on who won, much as they did in 2000, declaring George W. Bush president instead of then-Vice President Al Gore based on a few hundred controversial ballots in the state of Florida.

Is the high court ready for such a scenario? According to Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, she’s pondered such a scenario and is “as prepared as anyone can be.”

Speaking with Norah O’Donnell of CBS News, according to HuffPost, Jackson explained her thoughts on the matter.

With a laugh, Jackson flipped the script on O’Donnell, saying, “Let me ask you, are you prepared for all of the news cycles that you’re getting as a result of this election?”

“Um, no,” the host replied.

“No, exactly,” Jackson said. “I mean, I think there are legal issues that arise out of the political process. And so, the Supreme Court has to be prepared to respond — if — if that should be necessary.”

Justice Jackson also weighed in on the high court’s controversial ruling in July that a president has immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. Jackson dissented in that decision, warning that it “breaks new and dangerous ground.”

“In your dissent, you wrote that, ‘The court declared for the first time in history that the most powerful official in the United States can, under circumstances yet to be fully determined, become a law unto himself.’ Sounds like a warning,” O’Donnell noted.

“You were concerned about broad immunity?” O’Donnell inquired.

“I was concerned about a system that appeared to provide immunity for one individual under one set of circumstances. When we have a criminal justice system that had ordinarily treated everyone the same,” Jackson responded.

The 6-3 decision was crafted by the six conservative members of the court, with the three progressive justices, Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissenting, arguing that giving such total immunity to a president makes him accountable to no one, much like a king.

 

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Abortion Supreme Court

Ketanji Brown Jackson Swats Down Alito For His Bogus ‘Scientific Knowledge’ Of Abortion

During oral arguments in the Supreme Court case of FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine on Tuesday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made it clear to fellow justice Samuel Alito that she wasn’t about to put up with his so-called “scientific knowledge” of abortion or drugs that allow women to exercise their reproductive freedom.

The Daily Beast notes that the case involves the drug mifepristone, a drug that can be used by women in the privacy of their homes and is now the method of choice for 63% of women across the country.

The justices heard arguments Tuesday morning from a lawyer for the anti-abortion Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which holds that the FDA erred in allowing mifepristone, one of the drugs used in a medication abortion, to be dispensed remotely. The FDA and most major medical associations say the ruling is sound, pointing to studies showing no difference in severe complications when the pills are dispensed via telemedicine versus in person.

Attorneys arguing on behalf of the drug noted that the plaintiffs in the case had no legal standing to even bring the case, which led Alito to ask, “Shouldn’t someone be able to challenge that in court? The American people have no remedy for that?”

Alito later asked essentially the same question of an attorney for Danco, the company that manufactures mifepristone.

“During the questioning of the solicitor general, the statement was made that no court has ever previously second-guessed the FDA’s judgment about access to a drug,” Alito said.

“Do you think the FDA is infallible?”

That prompted Justice Jackson to inquire, “You were asked if the agency is infallible, and I guess I’m wondering about the flip side, which is do you think that courts have specialized scientific knowledge with respect to pharmaceuticals?”

“Do you have concerns about judges parsing medical and scientific studies?”

As Justice Jackson rightly observed, courts and judges do not have special medical knowledge. Doctors and scientists, however, do, and they’re the ones who should make the decisions on what drugs are safe and are available to the public.

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LGBT Issues Supreme Court

Justice Jackson Has The Perfect Question When An Attorney Urges SCOTUS To Allow LGBTQ Discrimination

The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments today in a case involving the rights of private businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ Americans on “religious grounds,” and there are fears that conservatives on the high court may allow discrimination if the defendant claims it violates his or her beliefs.

Reuters reports on the case:

The wedding websites that Colorado-based web designer Lorie Smith would like to create for clients might offer ceremony details, pictures, a story about the couple and a biblical quote celebrating how through marriage they “become one flesh.”

They would not, however, show same-sex nuptials.

Smith, an evangelical Christian who believes marriage is only between a man and a woman, has taken her fight to refuse to make wedding websites for same-sex couples and to advertise that policy to the U.S. Supreme Court in a major case to be argued on Monday. Smith is appealing lower court rulings backing Colorado.

During oral arguments, some of the conservative justices did indeed seem included to allow such blatant discrimination, according to CNN.

Justice Neil Gorsuch noted that a businessperson’s objection would not be based on the status of the same-sex couple, but instead, the message the businessperson did not want to send. The question isn’t the “who” Gorsuch said, but the “what.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett told a lawyer for the designer that her “strongest ground” is that the designer’s work is “custom.”

The newest justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, had a brilliant question for an attorney representing Smith before the court.

“Give me your thoughts on a photography business in a shopping mall during this holiday season that offers a product called Scenes with Santa, and this business wants to express its own view of nostalgia about Christmases past by reproducing classic 1940s and 1950s Santa scenes…because they’re trying to capture the feelings of a certain era, their policy is that only white children can be photographed with Santa in this way, because that’s how they view the scenes with Santa that they’re trying to depict.”

The attorney desperately attempted to differentiate between the two:

“Because in the photograph itself, the objection is not contained in that photograph. But in addition, I think it’s important to remind the court –”

When Jackson countered that the two instances are exactly the same, the attorney replied, “The specific objection that you’re including is not necessarily in that photograph, but even if it were, this court has protected vile, awful, reprehensible, violent speech in the past.”

How exactly is it “speech” to refuse to set up a website for someone just because the potential client is LGBTQ? That’s discrimination and it wouldn’t be allowed based on the color of a person’s skin, as Justice Jackson noted. But the current right-wing 6-3 majority on the court may allow it to happen with their approval. Yet another reason we need to expand the court and make sure these six extremist judges don’t take away every right we have.

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Discrimination Supreme Court Voting Rights

Ketanji Brown Jackson Gives Her SCOTUS Brethren A History Lesson During Tuesday Oral Arguments

During oral arguments Tuesday at the U.S. Supreme Court, Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson gave her right-wing brethren a much-needed history lesson on voting rights.

The case before the high court is Merrill v. Merrigan, which challenges Section 2 of Voting Rights Act. A lower court ruling struck down an Alabama legislative map which is considered to be discriminatory to people of color who live in the state.

Justice Jackson weighed in, making it clear that she isn’t going to sit quietly and let conservatives strike down more of the Voting Rights Act.

“I don’t think that we can assume that just because race is taken into account that that necessarily creates an equal protection problem, because I understood that we looked at the history and traditions of the Constitution and what the framers and the founders thought about, and when I drilled down to that level of analysis, it became clear to me that the framers themselves adopted the Equal Protection Clause, the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment, in a race-conscious way. That they were, in fact, trying to ensure that people who had been discriminated against, the freedmen, during the Reconstruction period, were actually brought equal to everyone else in society.”

Indeed, those two amendments, which were ratified after the Civil War, were meant to protect the rights of black citizens who had once been enslaved in Confederate states, Jackson continued, and she supported her assertion with statements made by the very legislators who crafted them.

“I looked in the report that was submitted by the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which drafted the 14th Amendment, and that report says that the entire point of the amendment was to secure rights of the freed former slaves. The legislator who introduced that amendment said that, quote, ‘Unless the Constitution should restrain them, those states will all, I fear, keep up this discrimination and crush to death the hated freedmen.'”

But Justice Jackson was far from finished reminding her colleagues of why such laws are necessary today just as they were during Reconstruction.

“They drafted the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which specifically stated that citizens would have the same civil rights as enjoyed by white citizens. That’s the point of that act, to make sure that the other citizens, the Black citizens, would have the same as the white citizens.

“They recognized that there was unequal treatment. People based on their race were being treated unequally and, importantly, when there was a concern that the Civil Rights Act wouldn’t have a constitutional foundation, that’s when the 14th Amendment came into play. It was drafted to give a constitutional foundation for a piece of legislation that was designed to make people who had less opportunity and less rights equal to white citizens.”

Jackson concluded her comments by eviscerating the argument being made attorneys for the state of Alabama:

“So with that as the framing and the background, I’m trying to understand your position that Section 2, by its plain text is doing that same thing, is saying that you need to identify people in this community who have less opportunity and less ability to participate and ensure that that’s remedied, right? It’s a race-conscious effort, as you have indicated. I’m trying to understand why that violates the 14th Amendment, given the history and background of the 14th Amendment.”

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Supreme Court U.S. Senate

Ted Cruz Gets Obliterated By Fellow GOP Senator For His ‘Jackassery’ At Confirmation Hearing

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) appeared to take a shot at his fellow GOP Senate colleague Ted Cruz (TX) during Wednesday’s confirmation hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has been nominated by President Joe Biden to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court.

As he was questioning Judge Jackson, Sasse noted that he didn’t think it would be a good idea to have cameras in the high court:

“A huge part of why this institution doesn’t work well is because we have cameras everywhere. Cameras change human behavior. We know this. … There’s a whole bunch of things humans can do if they’re not immediately mindful of some distant camera audience that they might be trying to create a soundbite for.

“I think we should recognize that the jackassery we often see around here is partly because of people mugging for short-term camera opportunities, and it is definitely a second and third and fourth order effect that the court should think through before it has advocates in there who are not only trying to persuade you nine justices, but also trying to get on cable that night or create a viral video.”

Though he didn’t call Cruz out by name, the Texas Republican immediately looked up from his cell phone and stared at Sasse, clearly thinking the jibe had been directed at him.

Sasse’s remarks set off a wave of speculation on Twitter, with overall agreement that the Nebraskan had taken a shot at Cruz.

https://twitter.com/imillhiser/status/1506718964495360002?s=20&t=tNNuVfI1l-r1q6XUrVpM5g

If indeed Sasse was aiming his comment at Cruz, he was merely speaking the truth. Ted Cruz has always been and will always will be one of the biggest jackasses on the face of the planet.