The sad left was publicly, chest-poundingly upset by yesterday's last-day decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, most particularly the case in which the Court's majority ruled on the issue of district courts' capacity to issue rulings with nationwide impact.
The case itself actually related to the concept of birthright citizenship and the interpretation of the Constitutional amendment that dealt with the concept. Curiously, that aspect of the decision wasn't dealt with, for now. What was decided, in a 6-3 majority opinion that now serves as legal precedent, is that district courts no longer have the ability to block the President from implementing executive powers, certainly not beyond the impact of the case before such court.
Beyond the celebration of those believing in law and the Constitution, and the tooth-grinding of the left, a non-trivial amount of the post-mortem appeared to deal with a minority opinion delivered by Ketanji Brown Jackson, the most junior associate justice on the Court.
Justices deliver minority opinions all the time. The interpretation of written law is a large part of why there is a Supreme Court in the first place; the law is the words of the legislation, and legislatures often produce ambiguously written legislation, as well as laws which are in potential violation of the Constitution.
Jackson's minority opinion was fraught with issues, not the least of which being the lack of Constitutional foundation for her rationale; but even more so the problem that, as Justice Amy Barrett wrote in her commentary on Jackson's dissent, that Jackson was objecting to the concept of an imperial executive and replacing it with an imperial judiciary, a rather immature approach for a Supreme Court justice.
We should all be bothered by the presence on the Court of such a political individual, and we are, but it is even sadder that the opinions of this justice will forever be questions of competence related to her appointment itself.
Ketanji Brown Jackson is black. Duh. We all can see that. No would care; Justice Clarence Thomas is equally black, and certainly has strong opinions flavored by his own beliefs in the primacy of the Constitution. But Thomas was not appointed the Court because of his race, but because of his background and approach to Constitutional law. You might say race was not a factor in his appointment, but considering the hateful rhetoric thrown at him by senators -- including Joe Biden, then a back-bench senator from Delaware -- it was certainly part of the process.
But in Jackson's case, race was not only a factor, but a requirement. Joe Biden, whose handlers had him appoint her, declared publicly that he was looking for a black woman; i.e., no white people need apply. Joe Biden is of Irish descent, and I wondered if the irony would have struck him that, 100 years after "No Irish Need Apply" signs were common at job sites, this descendant of legal Irish immigrants put out a race requirement for a Supreme Court appointment.
Of course, Biden had no clue what was going on, so he gets a pass. Someone made that decision, and Biden just blathered in assent.
So now we have however-many years of a Court with an associate justice whose primary qualification was race. And here is the thing. Because of Biden's pronouncement that the appointment would be a DEI hire, Jackson will, for the rest of her tenure, be regarded as a DEI hire -- not a standard-issue associate justice, but one who was put on the Court to fill a quota.
Democrats never look at the downstream effects of their actions and, yes, I've written before about that very issue. With them, it is all about power and votes, and if they think they'll get more votes in the next election by installing a black associate justice, they'll do it, regardless of their actual judicial competence or willingness to apply blind justice.
We are not privy to the internal debates of the Court when discussing cases after oral arguments, but one has to wonder how the other eight justices regard the opinions and inputs of the most junior member of the Court, knowing that she was a classic DEI hire, wasn't the most qualified candidate, just a black female with sufficient experience to get the Senate to confirm her.
The note from Justice Barrett suggests that the rest of the Court has its own concern about what Jackson is even doing on the Court (she actually wrote, to paraphrase, "We will not concern ourselves with Justice Jackson's opinion ..."). So there's that.
But there's also the situation that, to fill a racial quota, there is now a lifetime appointment on the Court of a DEI hire, someone whose opinions are starting to make it clear that her judicial opinions are political, reflecting the signs of protestors more than the history of the interpretations of the Constitution.
I'm not a lawyer, of course, but it is my semi-educated view that the impact of decisions should be only a minor, or even absent, factor in the Supreme Court's consideration. Laws may have detrimental impact on some people, but if they are Constitutionally sound, it is not for the Court to overturn them.
Justices like Jackson may have graduated law school, but if they haven't learned the lesson that their politics should not be a factor, certainly not to the extent of allowing impact to affect their assessment of Constitutionally, then Houston, we have a problem.
And at bottom, every serious black judge in the nation should be concerned that the single outcome of the appointment of Jackson to the Court is to call in question the seriousness and qualification of them as competent members of the judiciary.
DEI strikes again.
Copyright 2025 by Robert Sutton. Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com and, after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton.
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