Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a sharp critique on September 24 regarding how the nation's highest court manages emergency appeals. Speaking at the University of the District of Columbia law school, Jackson warned that requests for immediate judicial intervention must not evolve into a “special avenue that certain privileged litigants can use selectively.”
Jackson noted that the court has become noticeably less restrained in recent years, particularly regarding pending cases that involve controversial matters. She suggested that the court is increasingly bypassing the traditional appellate process, where justices would typically wait until facts were established and lower courts had conducted a full assessment of the law. “It was only in exigent circumstances, actual emergencies, that the justices felt the need to intervene in pending cases,” Jackson remarked. She expressed a strong belief that the court should adhere to its history and tradition of restraint, noting that little benefit arises from steering an institution meant to operate outside the political realm into the heat of the fray.
While Jackson did not name President Donald Trump directly, her comments reflected ongoing frustration with how the conservative-majority court has handled emergency requests from the administration. She alluded to a dissent written last year by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, which noted that some frequent filers of emergency appeals seem to have the court on “speed dial.” Jackson, one of the court's three liberal justices, has previously criticized the bench for showing preferential treatment toward the government and for its willingness to undermine lower court rulings.
She specifically recalled a case from last year in which the court allowed the administration to block $783 million in health research grants. Describing the situation as “Calvinball jurisprudence,” she invoked the made-up game from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes to illustrate her point. “Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules,” she wrote in a prior opinion. “We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.”
Jackson acknowledged that while the court has permanently shut down some of President Trump’s attempts to use emergency powers for tariffs and citizenship rules, the majority has frequently sided with the administration on interim decisions that are made without a full record or oral arguments. She argued that in any case where early intervention is sought, the petitioner must demonstrate that real-world harm is imminent. If such harm is proven, she stated, the court should rule based on which party would suffer the greater injury. “We have an appellate review process with an equitable emergency exception that can sometimes warrant the Supreme Court’s early intervention, but only when exigent circumstances require it,” she concluded. “I feel strongly that we should be sticking to that history and tradition.”
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