During an event promoting her new book, United States Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett spoke about the widely circulated comment she directed at fellow Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in the opinion she authored earlier this summer prohibiting universal injunctions.
Kicking off a tour for her new book “Listening to the Law,” which is taking place while the Supreme Court is not in session, Barrett spoke for over an hour at the Lincoln Center in Manhattan this past Thursday.
Bari Weiss of the Free Press asked Justice Barrett about these remarks as part of her rare public appearance.
In response, Barrett said that she believes she “set the calibration right” in her June opinion by calling out Justice Jackson for the arguments she advanced in her dissenting opinion.
In the 6-3 opinion stating that federal judges do not have the authority to issue nationwide injunctions, Barrett harshly criticized Jackson’s position, saying:
“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. We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”
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“I thought Justice Jackson had made an argument in strong terms that I thought warranted a response,” Barrett explained.
“I personally tend not to be spicy for the sake of being spicy, but I am from New Orleans and everyone likes a little Tabasco once in a while,” she said.
Despite this, Barrett emphasized that she has the “deepest respect for Jackson,” noting that she was not attacking Jackson personally with these remarks.
“We just disagreed about the scope of judicial power,” Barrett said, as reported first by Fox News.
“I attack ideas. I don’t attack people,” Barrett added, attributing the quote to the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
Later in the event, as part of a lightening round of questions, Barrett was asked to describe each of her fellow Justices in one word.
She described Chief Justice John Roberts as “chief,” Justice Neil Gorsuch with the phrase “out west,” and Justice Brett Kavanaugh with the word “sports.”
For Jackson, she paused before landing on the words “actor” and “Broadway.”
