U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Thursday expressed profound concern about the state of U.S. democracy, adding that she is also invested in getting people to focus on what’s happening in the government.
“What keeps you up at night?” the moderator asked.
“I would say the state of our democracy,” Jackson replied. “I’m really very interested in getting people to focus and to invest and to pay attention to what is happening in our country and in our government.”
She did not elaborate further.
During the past term, which concluded on June 27, Jackson wrote 24 opinions and delivered the most dissenting opinions of any judge on the court, according to a SCOTUSblog analysis.
Asked how she decides when to pen her own dissents, Jackson said she does so when “I feel like I might have something to offer, and something to add, and I’m not afraid to use my voice.”
Most recently, Jackson was the only dissenting voice in the court’s emergency decision that cleared the way for Trump to carry out his mass firings across the federal government.
“For some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation,” she wrote. “In my view, this decision is not only truly unfortunate but also hubristic and senseless.”
The order was unsigned and did not include a vote count, given its emergency nature.
Last month, Jackson also wrote a scathing dissent to the 6-3 decision to limit the nationwide injunctions used by judges to halt President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship.
Jackson said the ruling “threatens the rule of law” by emboldening the executive branch at the expense of all others.
“I have no doubt that, if judges must allow the Executive to act unlawfully in some circumstances, as the Court concludes today,” she wrote, “executive lawlessness will flourish, and from there, it is not difficult to predict how this all ends.”