Justice Jackson says Supreme Court’s handling of emergency cases creates ‘warped’ process

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday said the Supreme Court’s handling of emergency cases has created a “warped” process that effectively signaled the outcome of high-profile controversies prematurely, describing that as an “unfortunate” departure from how the justices handled short-fuse appeals just a few decades ago.

“This uptick in the court’s willingness to get involved with cases on the emergency docket is a real unfortunate problem,” Jackson said in remarks at the federal courthouse in Washington, DC, during an event attended by lower court judges and lawyers. “I think it is not serving the court or our country well at this point.”

Though Jackson’s point was similar to one she has repeatedly made in written dissents, the liberal justice’s airing of her concerns added a degree of tension to the event in which she spoke alongside Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a conservative who offered a vastly different view of the reasons for the increase in the court’s “shadow docket” rulings and its significance.

Jackson’s comments came as the three-justice liberal wing has expressed growing frustration with the conservative Supreme Court’s resolution of a flood of emergency appeals in President Donald Trump’s favor, including decisions that allowed the administration to significantly step up immigration enforcement, fire the leaders of independent federal agencies and cut spending approved by Congress. The court has backed the Trump administration in 80% of those cases, a far higher share than during the Biden administration.

Neither Jackson nor Kavanaugh discussed specific cases at the event.

An otherwise breezy conversation between the two justices about the routines of the Supreme Court turned more testy when US District Judge Paul Friedman asked about the court’s emergency docket. Those cases involve relatively quick decisions about what should happen to a policy or law in the meantime while courts are considering their legality.

The cases are usually decided without the full briefing of regular, merits decisions by the court, and they almost never involve oral argument.

Kavanaugh opined that the rise in emergency cases was at least partly attributable to presidents who are eager to push policies — and who are thwarted by a gridlocked Congress — resorting to executive action to accomplish their goals. Kavanaugh said that some of the criticism of the court’s emergency docket is unfair, given that the court must rule one way or the other on whether to grant or deny those cases. He questioned the “short memories” of some of the court’s critics, noting that the Biden administration also regularly appealed cases when lower courts shut down its policies.

But that prompted Jackson to retort that the court itself was at least partly to blame.

“I think it’s because the Supreme Court has shown a willingness to grant these emergency motions,” she said. “Brett will remember that when we clerked some 20 years ago, this was not the Supreme Court’s stance, that just because these motions were filed the court actually had to entertain and grant them on their merits.”

As if speaking at a televised presidential debate, Friedman asked if Kavanaugh wanted to offer a rebuttal.

“Ketanji states it well,” Kavanaugh responded, before adding that “you have to have the same position, no matter who’s president. “

“I agree with that,” Jackson said.

“I know you do,” Kavanaugh added.

The back and forth came a week after the court handed down simultaneous emergency docket orders in two touchy political cases. In one, the court blocked a California education policy that restricts teachers from informing parents about a student’s gender expression. In another, it approved an emergency appeal from a Republican congresswoman in New York who asked the court to stop a redrawing of her congressional district. Both decisions drew sharp dissents from the court’s liberal wing.

“Today’s decision shows, not for the first time, how our emergency docket can malfunction,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent joined by Jackson. “The court is impatient: It already knows what it thinks, and insists on getting everything over quickly.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.