When I wrote the last post, I could not find a link to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s sole written dissent in the 8-1 SCOTUS decision today to, you know, let the President of the United States run the Executive Branch, which the Constitution says he controls. Well, I finally did find one here, and the dissent is exactly what you would expect if you’ve read her recent hysterical, legally incompetent rants because her party isn’t getting away with its various efforts to cripple the Trump Administration. She is distinctly echoing the primal scream of frustration that the Axis is emitting because its dreams of a Woke paradise are evaporating by the hour.
She wrote in part, “In my view, this was the wrong decision at the wrong moment, especially given what little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground. This case is about whether that action amounts to a structural overhaul that usurps Congress’s policymaking prerogatives — and it is hard to imagine deciding that question in any meaningful way after those changes have happened. Yet, for some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation.”
This is a policy complaint, not a legal one. Remarkably, even the pathetic Justice Sotomayor went along with the majority. The fact that Presidents have sought authority to do what the Constitution makes clear that they already have the power to do does not amend the Constitution. The Court lifted the say because it believed it likely that the President’s reorganization of his own Branch would be found lawful. It’s a good bet, given that the Constitution backs him up and there is no progressive majority on the Court more concerned with blocking Republican policies than following the law.
The coalition of unions and activists that sued to block the cuts said in a statement, “Today’s decision has dealt a serious blow to our democracy and puts services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy.”
Are you sick of this narrative yet? It’s a grave thret to democracy to allow the elected President of the United Sates do what he said he would do if elected. More…
“This decision does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our Constitution.”
But it is. Nothing in the document requires Congressional approval for Presidential control of his own Branch. The Founders do not mention “federal workers” at all, and envisioned a government that would not have departments and agencies multiplying like rabbits. Jackson’s tell is the use of her term “wrecking ball.” That’s a political bias without relevance to the law or the Constitution. She is the one advocating an abuse of power, not the majority.
Ethics Alarms 
Was Justice Jackson nominated by the autopen? That would explain a lot.
If Justice Jackson wishes to cast stones, she would be wise to direct them at a Congress which, over the course of many decades, willingly ceded its own authority to the Executive Branch. Rather than telling the Executive agencies what they MUST do, Congress basically said “This is the goal. You folks figure it out” and gave the agencies a hitherto-unlimited pot of money. Nobody should be surprised by the result.
I’ll give Justice Jackson this much: she makes Justice Sotomayor look smart.
I wonder what Sotomayor thinks of this dissent.
Actually, not much, as her concurrence with the majority suggested. When your dissent is even too stupid for Sonya….
Is it possible that the other justices could have such a low esteem for the ninth sister that peer pressure could motivate her to voluntarily leave the court?
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that she will have no problem being the biggest and boldest idealogue (she’s even throwing Sotomayer and Kagan under the bus with this dissent!) for as long as she is alive.
The fact that she entered the court and immediately began talking everyone’s ear off and writing scathing dissents means she has no interest in decorum, unity, or maintaining the status quo. She wants to take her activism to the highest court of the land.
As a private-sector employee in an industry sucking at the intermittent teat of subsidies under continuous crushing regulation, who has somehow survived multiple rounds of “rightsizing” layoffs in order to respond to the oligarchs who take a substantial portion of every paycheck….
Good riddance.
Idly curious if I was the source in my comment on the previous post, or if it was a parallel discovery.
I think “But that temporary,practical, harm-reducing preservation of the status quo was no match for this Court’s demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture.” was the first section that really jumped out at me. It’s an unprofessional attack on the entire rest of the court and gaslights about the “temporary” nature of stopping a reduction in force from even being planned for. The EO did not actually implement a reduction in force except via attrition and hiring freezes, which was not affected by the stay as I understand it. It did call for agency head to produce plans for doing so, but that’s about it. I have to wonder if she actually read it before writing her dissent. Am I misreading the EO?
Still didn’t finish reading her dissent, but the it didn’t get off to a good start
Parallel discovery. But really close—I saw your post after I found the link but before I added it to my post.
“In my view, this was the wrong decision at the wrong moment, especially given what little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground. This case is about whether that action amounts to a structural overhaul that usurps Congress’s policymaking prerogatives — and it is hard to imagine deciding that question in any meaningful way after those changes have happened. Yet, for some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation.”
It is when the Court knows so little that it should not step in the middle of things.
-Jut