Times appear to be changing at the Supreme Court.
The high court’s decorum is well-documented history, with the warm respect and friendship shared between ideological opposites Justice Clarence Thomas and the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg being a prime example of that.
These days, however, there hasn’t been much warmth or respect when it comes to the differing ideologies on the Supreme Court bench.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a progressive, is the latest example of that subtle shift in Supreme Court culture, per Politico.
The outlet reported that Jackson blasted her fellow justices while giving a speech Monday at Yale Law School, particularly when it came to its handling of the emergency docket.
(Notably, that docket mostly returned favorable rulings for the administration of President Donald Trump.)
“The court’s stay decisions can, at times, come across as utterly irrational,” Jackson said. “The court has left confusion in its wake.”
She added, “There is a serious concern that the Supreme Court’s modern stay practices are having an enormously disruptive and potentially corrosive effect.”
Jackson further derided the other justices, claiming that their “scratch-paper musings” had deleterious effects on the considerations of lower courts.
The timing of these incendiary remarks is notable.
The liberal justice’s comments came shortly after she was the lone dissenter in the landmark Chiles v. Salazar case, where the eight other justices ruled that bans on “conversion therapy” violate the First Amendment.
That being said, Jackson is hardly the only justice to break decorum of late.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, another progressive, recently raised eyebrows when she threw some veiled (though still not especially subtle) shots at conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh while speaking at an event hosted by the University of Kansas School of Law.
“This is from a man whose parents were professionals,” she said of Kavanaugh in reference to his concurrence in an immigration-related case. “And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”
In a separate recent incident, Kavanaugh was forced to fire back at Jackson after she took a small — but public — jab at him during a Washington, D.C. event for lawyers and judges.
But while cracks in the traditions of the Supreme Court may be a little more publicly visible these days, not all decorum has been lost.
According to NBC News, Sotomayor actually apologized for her digs at Kavanaugh in a statement issued through the court.
“At a recent appearance at the University of Kansas School of Law, I referred to a disagreement with one of my colleagues in a prior case, but I made remarks that were inappropriate,” Sotomayor said. “I regret my hurtful comments. I have apologized to my colleague.”
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