Ketanji Brown Jackson says Supreme Court justices “get along well”: “A model for learning how to disagree”
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said Tuesday that the justices on the court “get along well” despite their different viewpoints and believes it’s “a model for learning how to disagree without being disagreeable.”
“The court is very good at compartmentalizing, meaning that we focus on our work,” she told “CBS Mornings.” “We work very hard. We come up with our own individual opinions as to how we think about the law.”
“We’re sort of always thinking about the law in different ways. And so we have learned how to adapt to being in an environment with people who have very strongly held but different views,” she said.
She said the justices as a body and as a group are “very collegial.”
CBS News
Jackson became the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court when she was sworn in nearly four years ago. She has since emerged as one of the court’s strongest critics of President Trump. Her dissent in last year’s nationwide injunction case, which reined in federal judges’ ability to issue sweeping orders and stemmed from Mr. Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, prompted an unusually sharp reply from Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Five other justices joined Barrett, who said Jackson’s dissent “chooses a startling line of attack.”
When the court ultimately ruled that the administration could move forward with Mr. Trump’s plan, Jackson stood alone, saying the order is “not only truly unfortunate, but also hubristic and senseless.”
As the Supreme Court takes months to come to decisions on other hot-button issues, including Mr. Trump’s tariffs, Jackson said “there are lots of nuanced legal issues that the court has to thoroughly consider.”
“We actually deliberate over a period of time where each of the justices decides how they feel about the issues and writes, and it takes a while to write,” Jackson said.
“We will make it through”
In the latest edition of her book “Lovely One” geared toward young adults, Jackson includes a speech she gave at a debate tournament while in high school in 1987. She told “CBS Mornings” that the point of the speech was to “really get people to focus on the moment and try to not be so overwhelmed by the circumstance.”
She believes this moment in U.S. history is divided, but said “we’ve certainly had other periods in our history in which we’ve been divided and we’ve come through them.”
“If people really focus on their own values and the things that matter to them, if they invest in their communities and in their loved ones, we will make it through,” she added.
Jan Crawford and
Caitlin Yilek
contributed to this report.
