Jackson warns Supreme Court’s emergency rulings imposing ‘institutional costs’

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson implored her Supreme Court colleagues Thursday to dip into emergency docket cases less frequently, warning that it is imposing “institutional costs.”

“Why is it that one party should get a fast pass to the Supreme Court of the United States, when so many other parties are queued up, waiting patiently for the court’s attention ?” Jackson told a crowd gathered at the University of the District of Columbia’s law school.

It’s the junior liberal justice’s latest public critique of her colleagues’ repeated decisions to step into ongoing litigation while it remains pending, oftentimes to allow President Trump to resume aspects of his agenda blocked by lower courts. Jackson has repeatedly said the interventions are having a potentially “corrosive” effect on the judiciary’s ordinary handling of cases.

Speaking on Thursday, Jackson suggested the nation’s highest court isn’t treating emergency cases like how it did when she was a clerk roughly 25 years ago. At that time, she said justices, unlike those today, tried to stay out of significant, controversial cases as long as possible.

“It has been noticeably less restrained, especially with respect to pending cases that involve controversial matters,” Jackson said.

She did not mention Trump by name as she delivered the university’s annual Joseph L. Rauh Jr. Lecture. But, at one point, Jackson invoked a 2025 dissent from fellow liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in which she stated the Trump administration had the court’s emergency docket on “speed dial .”

Hours ahead of Jackson’s talk, the same case from this Sotomayor opinion returned to the Supreme Court . The administration again wants an emergency order to lift a judge’s permanent block on its third-country deportation policy.

Jackson herself received the case by default, as she handles emergency matters arising from Massachusetts — where the case was filed. She ordered a response by Monday but so far has declined to immediately step in.

It marks the Trump administration’s 40th emergency application to the Supreme Court since the president retook the White House. It’s a staggering number that the administration argues reflects lower judges’ frequent overstepping, while its critics say it shows the president has been acting lawlessly.

Jackson has repeatedly ruled against the Trump administration in its flood of emergency appeals. She has often penned searing dissents, standing alone at times.

“If we’re not careful, the emergency docket can and will become an end run around the standard review process, a special avenue that certain privileged litigants can use selectively,” Jackson said on Thursday.