Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson appealed to the American public to defend the judicial system’s independence amid an onslaught of personal attacks and demands for personal fealty from President Donald Trump.
Speaking to hundreds of students Tuesday at Southern Methodist University, the liberal justice did not name Trump or members of his administration.
She did, however, encourage Americans to “stand up” for judicial independence, just one day after Trump blasted his Supreme Court appointees for not being sufficiently loyal.
“Equal justice under law is a key tenet to freedom in our society, and in order to have that, you have to have an independent judiciary — one that is not beholden to the political branches or beholden to people,” Jackson said, as reported by Politico.
“I just wish that people really focused on that and, therefore, stood up in some ways for the judiciary, when people — judges are being attacked and undermined, that is really an attack on our society,” she added.
The comments came more than a year after Jackson received a standing ovation when she appeared to become the first Supreme Court Justice to denounce the Trump administration’s “relentless attacks” on the federal judiciary.
“Across the nation, judges are facing increased threats of not only physical violence, but also professional retaliation just for doing our jobs,” Jackson told a conference of judges in Puerto Rico. “And the attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity.”
Weeks earlier, Trump had branded Judge James Boasberg, who ruled the administration had illegally deported Venezuelan migrants to a mega prison in El Salvador, a “Radical Left Lunatic,” while his deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller railed against a cabal of “Communist” judges determined to keep “terrorists” in the country.
Since then, Trump’s attacks have only escalated in response to a rare rebuke from the Supreme Court’s conservative justices.
In February, the court struck down import duties that Trump had imposed on products from dozens of U.S. trading partners, with Trump appointees Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch joining the 6-3 ruling that the tariffs exceeded the president’s authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
In April, Barrett and Gorsuch also appeared skeptical of the government’s arguments in favor of the president’s effort to overturn birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
After the tariff ruling, Trump raged that the two were a “disgrace to our nation,” “fools and lapdogs,” and “an embarrassment to their families.”
Months later, he was still spiraling over the tariffs decision—and panicking over the court’s upcoming birthright citizenship ruling—as he accused his appointees of being “so bad, and hurtful to our Country.”
The justices “have to do the right thing, but it’s really OK for them to be loyal to the person that appointed them to ‘almost’ the highest position in the land, that is, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court,” he ranted on Truth Social this week.
With Tuesday’s remarks, Jackson took a step beyond buoying legal insiders and appealed to the public to protect the rule of law, Politico noted.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
