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Supreme Court nationwide injunction ruling: What are Justices Barrett and Jackson's arguements - What it means
The Supreme Court handed Trump a major victory by ruling to curb the power of federal judges to impose nationwide rulings impeding his policies
The US Supreme Court on Friday handed President Donald Trump a major victory by ruling to curb the power of federal judges to impose nationwide rulings impeding his policies. However, the issue of whether the administration can limit birthright citizenship still remains unresolved. Trump welcomed the court's 6-3 ruling, declaring that his administration can now proceed with numerous policies such as his executive order aiming to restrict birthright citizenship.
"We have so many of them. I have a whole list," Trump told reporters at the White House.
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Kentaji Brown Jackson vs Amy Coney Barrett
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who authored the ruling, directed lower courts that blocked Trump's order on birthright citizenship to reconsider. She and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson had completely different arguments in their opinions.
Jackson and other liberal justices wrote a joint dissent. The Biden-nominee, in her solo dissent, said ‘disaster was looming’.
“It gives the Executive the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate,” she wrote.
Barrett quickly rebuked her colleague.
“We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary. No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation—in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so," Barrett wrote.
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Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent, added: "The majority ignores entirely whether the President's executive order is constitutional, instead focusing only on the question whether federal courts have the equitable authority to issue universal injunctions. Yet the order's patent unlawfulness reveals the gravity of the majority's error and underscores why equity supports universal injunctions as appropriate remedies in this kind of case."
Trump called the ruling a ‘monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law’.
"It was a grave threat to democracy, frankly, and instead of merely ruling on the immediate cases before them, these judges have attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation," Trump said of nationwide injunctions.
(With inputs from Reuters)
