By Molly Claire Goddard
2:07pm PDT, Jun 30, 2025
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Amy Coney Barrett had some choice words for her fellow Supreme Court Justice
Ketanji Brown Jackson. Following the 6-3 decision that limited the lower court's ability to stop
Donald Trump's anti–birthright citizenship order from being enforced, the conservative member of the court attacked the more liberal-leaning justice's dissent on the matter.
Keep reading to learn what Barrett said about Jackson' stance on the ruling…MORE:
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In a scathing rebuke of Ketanji Brown Jackson, Amy Coney Barrett made it clear she did not agree with her left-leaning co-worker's stance on the decision that gives Donald Trump more power: "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," she wrote. "We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary. … Analyzing the governing statute involves boring 'legalese,' [Jackson] seeks to answer 'a far more basic question of enormous practical significance: May a federal court in the United States of America order the Executive to follow the law?'" Continued Barrett, "It is unnecessary to consider whether Congress has constrained the Judiciary; what matters is how the Judiciary may constrain the Executive. Justice Jackson would do well to heed her own admonition: '[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.' That goes for judges too."
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Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissent to the Supreme Court's ruling emphasized the damage that could be caused to American residents and Democracy as a whole: "It is not difficult to predict how this all ends. Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more," she wrote. "Quite unlike a rule-of-kings governing system, in a rule of law regime, nearly '[e]very act of government may be challenged by an appeal to law. At the very least, I lament that the majority is so caught up in minutiae of the Government's self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot."
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Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor also expressed her disapproval of the ruling in a dissent of her own. However, Amy Coney Barrett didn't mind the 71-year-old's opinion, calling it "conventional legal terrain, like the Judiciary Act of 1789 and our cases on equity." Sotomayor said in her legal writing, "No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates. Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship."
