Justice Jackson chides Supreme Court conservatives over 'oblivious'
pro-Trump emergency orders
[April 16, 2026]
By MARK SHERMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has
delivered a sustained attack on her conservative colleagues’ use of
emergency orders to benefit the Trump administration, calling the orders
“scratch-paper musings” that can “seem oblivious and thus ring hollow.”
The court's newest justice, Jackson delivered a lengthy assessment of
roughly two dozen court orders issued last year that allowed President
Donald Trump to put in place controversial policies on immigration,
steep federal funding cuts and other topics, after lower courts found
they were likely illegal.
While designed to be short-term, those orders have largely allowed Trump
to move ahead — for now — with key parts of his sweeping agenda.
Jackson spoke for nearly an hour on Monday at Yale Law School, which
posted a video of the event on Wednesday.
Last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor similarly talked about emergency
orders in an event Tuesday at the University of Alabama that also took
issue with the conservatives' approach.
Jackson has previously criticized the emergency orders both in
dissenting opinions and in an unusual appearance with Justice Brett
Kavanaugh last month. But her talk at Yale, addressing the public rather
than the other eight justices, was notable.
She referred to orders, which often are issued with little or no
explanation as “back-of-the-envelope, first-blush impressions of the
merits of the legal issue.”
Worse still, she said, was that the court then insists that “those
scratch-paper musings” be applied by lower courts in other cases.
The orders suffer from an additional problem, she said, a failure to
acknowledge that real people are involved, making them “seem oblivious
and thus ring hollow.”
She also pushed back on the court's assessment that preventing the
president from putting his policy in place also is a harm that often
outweighs what the challengers to a policy might face.
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The U.S. Supreme Court is seen in Washington, Tuesday, April 7,
2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
“The president of the United States, though he may be harmed in an
abstract way, he certainly isn't harmed if what he wants to do is
illegal,” Jackson said during a question-and-answer session with law
school dean Cristina Rodriguez.
The court used to be reluctant to step into cases early in the legal
process, she said. “There is value in avoiding having the court
continually touching the third rail of every divisive policy issue
in American life,” Jackson said.
While she said she couldn't explain the change, “in recent years,
the Supreme Court has taken a decidedly different approach to
addressing emergency stay applications. It has been noticeably less
restrained, especially with respect to pending cases that involve
controversial matters.”
Jackson, often joined by Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan, has
frequently dissented.
There have been conversations about emergency orders among the
justices, Jackson said, but she decided to speak publicly with the
goal of being “a catalyst for change.”
Also on Wednesday, Sotomayor issued a rare public apology to another
justice, Kavanaugh, for what she termed “hurtful comments" she made
last week during an appearance at the University of Kansas law
school.
Referencing an opinion Kavanaugh wrote in an immigration case where
the court granted an emergency order sought by the administration,
Sotomayor said her colleague “probably doesn’t really know any
person who works by the hour.” Her remarks were reported by
Bloomberg Law.
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