Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Thursday criticized the Supreme Court’s use of its emergency docket, saying that the court’s willingness to fast-track high-profile cases posed a threat to its standing among the American public.
The court, she said in a speech, “cannot expect the public to have faith in our judicial system if, without clear explanation, we are consistently greenlighting harmful acts” without a full hearing.
Justice Jackson told the audience that there was “a serious concern” that the Supreme Court’s handling of its emergency docket was “having an enormously disruptive and potentially corrosive effect” on the federal court system.
Her remarks came during an annual lecture hosted by the University of the District of Columbia’s law school aimed at honoring a commitment to civil rights and civil liberties. The crowd of several hundred people included students from the historically Black law school.
Her speech came about two hours after she had fielded the latest high-profile emergency application. That request came from the Trump administration, asking the Supreme Court to allow it to continue to rapidly deport immigrants to countries other than their own.
Justice Jackson did not speak directly about that case, but she pointed to other recent emergency rulings, saying that the court was now routinely using “truncated procedures” to weigh in on consequential cases.
