Among my more left-wing friends, it is taken as just a fact that Alito is a partisan hack who will contort doctrine to arrive at the Republican-friendly result whenever possible. I don't really believe that, but I have a hard time understanding how people who do think so don't see that Jackson would (and this may be charitable to her/unfair to Alito) be a mirror image of that approach to constitutional jurisprudence.
Barrett was absolutely correct that her CASA dissent was untethered from doctrine. And maybe that's fine, as this article gets at... but if Alito is partisan, Jackson certainly is as well.
Just to be clear, I wasn't saying it's "fine" in any objective sense or from my perspective. I picked my words very carefully (emphasis added by me): "FROM JUSTICE JACKSON'S PERSPECTIVE, not rigidly adhering to doctrine might be a feature rather than a bug."
I'm not a Supreme Court justice, so my views might be neither here nor there. But FWIW, from my personal perspective, I tend to prefer rulings that are (1) rooted in doctrine and (2) not results-oriented, whether from the right or the left.
Maybe, probably, I am just splitting hairs, but I'm not sure we know enough to say that Jackson is the most progressive of the liberal justices.
I think the dominant axis of conflict on the current court is occuring over the response to Trump's unprecedented attempts to wield executive power. And Jackson is certainly the most outspoken opponent of Trump's efforts in this regard. Does that make her the most progressive? Do her other opinions?
I guess if we have to arrange them all on a line, she does belong on the left-most end. But I don't think we would have said the same of her during the Biden Admin.
BTW, NYT Opinion columnist John McWhirter had an excellent column on Jackson's writings today.
Wow, this article is GREAT (and I hadn't seen it before you flagged it)—thanks for sharing!
John McWhorter—whose work I've long admired—perfectly explains my point about how Justice Jackson is writing "not just for lawyers and judges, but for the media and, ultimately, the American people." Thanks again!
Among my more left-wing friends, it is taken as just a fact that Alito is a partisan hack who will contort doctrine to arrive at the Republican-friendly result whenever possible. I don't really believe that, but I have a hard time understanding how people who do think so don't see that Jackson would (and this may be charitable to her/unfair to Alito) be a mirror image of that approach to constitutional jurisprudence.
Barrett was absolutely correct that her CASA dissent was untethered from doctrine. And maybe that's fine, as this article gets at... but if Alito is partisan, Jackson certainly is as well.
Just to be clear, I wasn't saying it's "fine" in any objective sense or from my perspective. I picked my words very carefully (emphasis added by me): "FROM JUSTICE JACKSON'S PERSPECTIVE, not rigidly adhering to doctrine might be a feature rather than a bug."
I'm not a Supreme Court justice, so my views might be neither here nor there. But FWIW, from my personal perspective, I tend to prefer rulings that are (1) rooted in doctrine and (2) not results-oriented, whether from the right or the left.
Maybe, probably, I am just splitting hairs, but I'm not sure we know enough to say that Jackson is the most progressive of the liberal justices.
I think the dominant axis of conflict on the current court is occuring over the response to Trump's unprecedented attempts to wield executive power. And Jackson is certainly the most outspoken opponent of Trump's efforts in this regard. Does that make her the most progressive? Do her other opinions?
I guess if we have to arrange them all on a line, she does belong on the left-most end. But I don't think we would have said the same of her during the Biden Admin.
BTW, NYT Opinion columnist John McWhirter had an excellent column on Jackson's writings today.
https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/dynamic/render?campaign_id=229&emc=edit_jm_20250717&instance_id=158689&isViewInBrowser=true&nl=john-mcwhorter&paid_regi=1&productCode=JM®i_id=88556722&segment_id=202068&sendId=202068&uri=nyt://newsletter/db37d89a-db8a-518d-9a53-2c6a78e97f80&user_id=2a42b4bcbeb89e887211d8249fadeeb7
Wow, this article is GREAT (and I hadn't seen it before you flagged it)—thanks for sharing!
John McWhorter—whose work I've long admired—perfectly explains my point about how Justice Jackson is writing "not just for lawyers and judges, but for the media and, ultimately, the American people." Thanks again!
Thanks for sharing the article.