Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned Sept. 24 that the Supreme Court has become less restrained in emergency appeals, saying requests for early intervention must not become a “special avenue” for privileged litigants seeking rulings in controversial cases.
Jackson did not mention the Trump administration in her remarks, but was referring to Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent in a case where the court backed the administration’s attempt to deport eight migrants to South Sudan. Jackson had also criticized the court for allowing the administration to block $783 million in health-research grants.
The court permanently blocked Trump’s emergency-power efforts to impose tariffs and rewrite citizenship rules, while its majority more often than not sided with his administration in interim decisions made without a full record or oral arguments. Jackson said applicants seeking early intervention should show that real-world harm is about to occur; the justices should then weigh which side would suffer greater harm.
