Clash Between Justices Alito and Brown Jackson Could Herald New Era of Discord at Supreme Court

The fraught written exchange between Justices Samuel Alito and Ketanji Brown Jackson exposes a remarkable breach of collegiality — and may portend a new chapter of conflict at the Supreme Court. The clash between the court’s second oldest justice and its second youngest came in the wake of the high court’s ruling last week in a Voting Rights Act case, Louisiana v. Callais that invalidated a map adopted by Louisiana’s legislature in 2024 that created two majority-black districts. On Monday, the justices granted a request to finalize the ruling immediately and allow the Pelican State to draw a new map in time for the 2026 vote.While Callais was decided by a six to three margin, the order expediting the implementation of that decision — and waiving the usual 32-day waiting period for the court’s clerk to dispatch the ruling to lower courts — featured only Justice Jackson in dissent. She argues in a four page cri de coeur that the ruling “has spawned chaos in the State of Louisiana” and that the court’s expedited procedure indicated a “strong political undercurrent.”Noting the rarity of the court agreeing to expedite its usual procedures at the request of one party — it has happened only once before — Justice Jackson writes that to “avoid the appearance of partiality we could … opt to stay on the sidelines and take no position by applying our default procedures.” The court’s action, she reckons, “is tantamount to an approval of Louisiana’s rush to pause the ongoing election in order to pass a new map.”Justice Alito’s response came in a concurrence joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. In it, he reasons that Justice Jackson’s logic would mandate that Louisiana’s elections be “held under a map that has been held to be unconstitutional” — an unthinkable scenario. Justice Alito then denounces as a “groundless and utterly irresponsible charge” Justice Jackson’s imprecations that under the majority’s approach “principles give way to power.” “What principle has the Court violated?” Justice Alito’s concurrence asks. He insists that the 32-day waiting period is not black letter law, but merely a default rule that can be abrogated in a case like this one. Instead, he contends that it is Justice Jackson’s “rhetoric that lacks restraint” and instead advances the “appearance of partiality (by running out the clock) on behalf of those who may find it politically advantageous to have the election occur under the unconstitutional map.”Callais is far from the first occasion where Justice Jackson has reached for language that pushes the high court’s rhetorical conventions. In the case that curtailed the use of nationwide injunctions, Trump v. Casa, she denounced the government’s position as an “existential threat to the rule of law” and “permission to engage in unlawful behavior.” She accused her colleagues of creating a “zone of lawlessness within which the Executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes.”Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority in Casa, called that language “extreme” and a “startling line of attack.” She added, “We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument. … We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.” Justice Barrett described Justice Jackson’s approach as “tethered neither to … sources nor, frankly, to any doctrine whatsoever.”In another case, Stanley v. City of Stamford, Justice Jackson wrote in a footnote joined by no other justice that her colleagues exhibited an “unfortunate misunderstanding of the judicial role.” She decried “pure textualists” who interpret statutes in a fashion destined to produce the “majority’s desired outcome.” Justice Jackson wrote that she “cannot abide” such a “narrow-minded approach.”Justice Jackson’s criticisms of her fellow justices has at times grown so heated that even her liberal colleagues have felt the need to signal dissent. In a case handed down last month that ruled that conversion therapy, Chiles v. Salazar, Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a footnote that Justice Jackson’s opposition “rests on reimagining — and in that way collapsing — the well-settled distinction between viewpoint-based and other content-based speech restrictions.”Disputes on the bitterly divided court are hardly confined to Justice Jackson’s chambers. Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a rare public apology last month after she alluded to Justice Brett Kavanaugh as “a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”

Clash Between Justices Alito and Brown Jackson Could Herald New Era of Discord at Supreme Court

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