How do you solve a problem like Ketanji?

The newest member of the Supreme Court is not just a problem for conservatives who deplore her judicial philosophy.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has become a problem for her Supreme Court colleagues, attacking them in dissents and generating counter-attacks in majority opinions. Professor Jonathan Turley explains in The Hill:

“I just feel that I have a wonderful opportunity.”

Those words of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson came in a recent interview, wherein the justice explained how she felt liberated after becoming a member of the Supreme Court “to tell people in my opinions how I feel about the issues. And that’s what I try to do.”

Jackson’s sense of liberation has increasingly become the subject of consternation on the court itself, as she unloads on her colleagues in strikingly strident opinions.

Most recently, Jackson went ballistic after her colleagues reversed another district court judge who issued a sweeping injunction barring the Trump Administration from canceling roughly $783 million in grants in the National Institutes of Health.

Again writing alone, Jackson unleashed a tongue-lashing on her colleagues, who she suggested were unethical, unthinking cutouts for Trump. She denounced her fellow justices, stating, “This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this administration always wins.”

(snip)

Jackson has attacked her colleagues in opinions, shattering traditions of civility and restraint. Her colleagues have clearly had enough. She now regularly writes diatribes that neither of her fellow liberals — Justices Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan — are willing to sign on to. Indeed, she has raged against opinions that her liberal colleagues have joined.

Caricature by Donkey Hotey CC By 2.0 license

The political and legal has become personal, and Justice Jackson is attacked by all 8 of her colleagues:

…Justice Amy Coney Barrett reached a breaking point, unleashing on Jackson in an opinion notably joined by her colleagues. Barrett noted that Jackson was describing “a vision of the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush.” She added: “We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary.”

In the New York Sun, A.R. Hoffmann points out that Justice Jackson is breaking new ground:

Justice Jackson’s dissent in National Institute of Health extends a pattern where the newest justice on the court, an appointee of President Biden, stakes out terrain that no other justice dares tread.

Justice Jackson told the Indianapolis Bar Association last month that, “I’m not afraid to use my voice.” She said that she will sometimes approach the court’s senior liberal justice, Justice Sotomayor, to tell her that she will write her own dissent — “I will say, forgive me, Justice Sotomayor, but I need to write on this case … because I feel like I might have something to offer.” She told the Hoosiers that “the state of our democracy” keeps her up at night.

In a case from last term, Stanley v. City of Stanford, Justice Jackson penned a footnote joined by nary another justice. She accused the majority of an “unfortunate misunderstanding of the judicial role” and vented that she “cannot abide” such a “narrow-minded approach.” She reckoned that the justices to her right interpreted the law to secure a “desired outcome.”

This level of animosity must be straining the collegiality at the famous hour-long Court lunches in its oak paneled dining room during oral arguments. Until recently, their collegiality was a point of pride for the justices. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, ideological opposites, were renowned as personal friends despite their differences.

Their informal interactions at lunchtime are an important aspect shaping the group culture of the Court. Claire Cushman writes in Judicature:

…the justices have purposefully sought occasions to break bread together to reinforce cordiality and cooperation. Their most important culinary tradition is lunching together on days when the Court hears arguments and deliberates cases in conference.

“The lunch break is both a pause in the action and a chance for collegiality,” says retired Justice John Paul Stevens. Justice Sonia Sotomayor says she enjoys the camaraderie: “It’s a wonderful experience.”

Of course, these lunch discussions bar one subject — cases

I can imagine that this ban is especially welcome since the latest justice joined the court.

Of course, Justice Jackson raised the hackles of conservatives from the start. Her confirmation hearing claim to be unable to define a woman reeked of either disqualifying delusion or else dissembling. But now that anger with the most junior justice has spread all the way to the Court itself, she is disrupting the mutual respect that should be the foundation of a body dedicated to dispassionate analysis of the Constitution’s applicability to our laws.

In small groups (the 9 justices qualify as one), one common role often emerges: the deviant, whose behavior serves as a signal to other members of how NOT to behave. Those who violate the norms of the group get sanctioned by other members, and in extreme situations may be shunned, becoming in the term of George Homans, author of the landmark study The Human Group (1950), an “isolate.”

Justice Jackson seems to be embracing the role of deviant and may drive the other liberals, (Justices Kagan and even Sotomayor) and weaker conservatives (Justices Barrett, Roberts, and Kavanaugh) in a conservative direction with her feelings-based rhetoric and willingness to impugn her colleagues.

Wearing their black robes and working in a marble Greek Temple, Supreme Court justices have every reason to feel apart from and elevated above the cares and concerns of ordinary society. It is important to them on a personal level, and more importantly, on a professional level to maintain their detachment from “telling people in [their] opinions how [they] feel about the issues.” Such rhetoric threatens their very concept of themselves and their job. They may well seek to isolate Justice Jackson ideologically as well as socially if the animus continues and deepens.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is a problem, all right, but perhaps less for conservatives who deplore her judicial inclinations than for progressives who wish the court to move in a leftward direction. The public is not allowed to see who dines with whom in the lunchroom, but we may see evidence in their decisions that Justice Jackson is becoming an isolate.

Thomas Lifson is the retired founder, editor, and publisher of American Thinker. A recovering academic, he holds a PhD in sociology from Harvard, where he formerly taught.