Justices Jackson and Kavanaugh spar over Supreme Court orders favoring Trump

WASHINGTON– Sharing a stage, Supreme Court Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Brett Kavanaugh argued Monday over the numerous emergency orders the court has issued allowing President Donald Trump to move forward with key parts of his agenda.

The setting was extraordinary, a federal courtroom filled with legal luminaries, including the federal judge fingered by Trump after blocking part of the president’s crackdown on immigration.

Kavanaugh, 61, and Jackson, 55, sat just feet apart in a courtroom in which they both heard cases while serving on the federal appeals court in Washington. They were only separated by a federal judge who asked questions of both of them. The occasion was an annual lecture in memory of a former federal judge and prosecutor, Thomas A. Flannery.

Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the high court in 2018. Jackson left the appeals court in 2022, appointed by President Joe Biden.

At issue in the emergency appeals is whether a policy that has been challenged in court should be allowed to take effect while a legal process that could last years continues.

Jackson, a frequent opponent of emergency orders, said Kavanaugh and other conservatives who sided with Trump repeatedly last year were not serving the court or the country well.

“The administration develops a new policy…and then insists that it go into effect immediately, before the challenge is decided. This greater willingness of the court to get involved in cases on the emergency docket is a truly unfortunate problem,” Jackson said to loud applause.

The court “creates a kind of distorted legal process” by intervening early in a case and essentially predicting the outcome before the arguments are fully developed, she said.

The Justice Department’s rush to the Supreme Court is not unique to the Trump administration, Kavanaugh said, explaining that as it becomes more difficult for Congress to pass laws, administrations are “pushing the limits of regulations. Some are legal, some are not.”

He said some critics of the recent orders had no objection when the justices allowed the Biden administration’s contested policies to go into effect even as the lawsuits were underway.

Many of the judges present have been involved in high-profile challenges to administrative policies, including U.S. District Judge James Boasberg. His conflict with the administration over deportation flights to a notorious El Salvador prison prompted Trump to call for Boasberg’s impeachment.

Also present was U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who ruled two days ago that Kari Lake, Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, did not have the legal authority to take the steps she took to largely dismantle Voice of America.

Neither Jackson nor Kavanaugh mentioned the justices’ names. But Jackson reiterated a complaint she and the other liberal justices made in their dissents.

“Should the Supreme Court supervise lower courts when they hear and decide issues? she asked.

Kavanaugh, who joined an opinion criticizing lower court judges for ignoring Supreme Court rulings, said the issues facing judges are often complicated and closed cases.

“None of us like it,” he said.