Ketanji Brown Jackson Quotes

[W]hen DOJ insists that Presidents can lawfully prevent their senior-level aides from responding to compelled congressional process and that neither the federal courts nor Congress has the power to do anything about it, DOJ promotes a conception of separation-of-powers principles that gets these constitutional commands exactly backwards. In reality, it is a core tenet of this Nation’s founding that the powers of a monarch must be split between the branches of the government to prevent tyranny.

[H]owever busy or essential a presidential aide might be, and whatever their proximity to sensitive domestic and national-security projects, the President does not have the power to excuse him or her from taking an action that the law requires. Fifty years of say so within the Executive branch does not change that fundamental truth. Nor is the power of the Executive unfairly or improperly diminished when the Judiciary mandates adherence to the law and thus refuses to recognize a veto-like discretionary power of the President to cancel his subordinates’ legal obligations.

I am acutely aware that, as a judge in our system, I have limited power, and I am trying in every case to stay in my lane.

DOJ... insists that, despite the fact that ordinary citizens bring subpoena-enforcement claims in the federal courts all the time, duly authorized committees of the House of Representatives cannot proceed against the Executive branch in court to seek enforcement of subpoenas for testimony and information issued to recalcitrant government officials in the context of congressional investigations. ... Meanwhile, says DOJ, the President has the authority to make unilateral determinations regarding whether he and his senior-level aides (both current and former) will respond to, or defy, the subpoenas that authorized House committees issue during constitutionally authorized investigations of potential wrongdoing within his administration. ...¹¹

This Court holds that Executive branch officials are not absolutely immune from compulsory congressional process—no matter how many times the Executive branch has asserted as much over the years—even if the President expressly directs such officials’ non-compliance.

Thus., when presented with a case or controversy, it is the Judiciary’s duty under the Constitution to interpret the law and to declare government overreaches unlawful. Similarly, the House of Representatives has the constitutionally vested responsibility to conduct investigations of suspected abuses of power within the government, and to act to curb those improprieties, if required. Accordingly, DOJ’s conceptual claim to unreviewable absolute testimonial immunity on separation-of-powers grounds—essentially, that the Constitution’s scheme countenances unassailable Executive branch authority—is baseless, and as such, cannot be sustained.

[T]he Constitution vests the Legislature with the power to investigate potential abuses of official authority—when necessary to hold government officials (up to, and including, the President) accountable, as representatives of the People of the United States—then House committees have both Article III standing and a cause of action to pursue judicial enforcement of their duly authorized and legally enforceable requests for information.

You might think you are all that, winning all sorts of prizes, learning all sorts of things, and that that entitles you to make fun of people. But don't you ever laugh at someone who doesn't know how to spell or read as well as you do! Just because you have been blessed with parents who are teachers, who are able to make sure you get an education, doesn't make you one bit better than someone who didn't have the same opportunities.

For my part, I simply cannot abide the majority’s senseless discarding of a model of accountability for criminal acts that treats every citizen of this country as being equally subject to the law—as the Rule of Law requires. That core principle has long prevented our Nation from devolving into despotism. Yet the Court now opts to let down the guardrails of the law for one extremely powerful category of citizen: any future President who has the will to flout Congress’s established boundaries.

In short, America has traditionally relied on the law to keep its Presidents in line. Starting today, however, Americans must rely on the courts to determine when (if at all) the criminal laws that their representatives have enacted to promote individual and collective security will operate as speedbumps to Presidential action or reaction. Once self-regulating, the Rule of Law now becomes the rule of judges, with courts pronouncing which crimes committed by a President have to be let go and which can be redressed as impermissible. So, ultimately, this Court itself will decide whether the law will be any barrier to whatever course of criminality emanates from the Oval Office in the future. The potential for great harm to American institutions and Americans themselves is obvious.

Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings. ...This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control. Rather, in this land of liberty, it is indisputable that current and former employees of the White House work for the People of the United States, and that they take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Moreover, as citizens of the United States, current and former senior-level presidential aides have constitutional rights, including the right to free speech, and they retain these rights even after they have transitioned back into private life.

challenges arose, a capacity for personal resilience. My hope is that the trials and triumphs of my journey as a daughter, sister, wife, mother, litigator, and friend will stand as a testament for young women, people of color, and strivers everywhere, especially those who nourish outsized ambitions and believe with stubborn faith in the possibility of achieving them. I want to encourage these bold dreamers not to be turned aside by adversity, because life will always present challenges. We must allow them to teach and fortify us, and help us build confidence in our ability to find a way through. In the end, we must trust the path we choose to walk, anchored by a firm sense of our potential, inspired by the people with whom we surround ourselves, and bolstered by our willingness to keep on.

Conducting investigations is the means that Congress uses to carry out that constitutional obligation. Thus, blatant defiance of Congress’ centuries-old power to compel the performance of witnesses is not an abstract injury, nor is it a mere banal insult to our democracy. It is an affront to the mechanism for curbing abuses of power that the Framers carefully crafted for our protection, and, thereby, recalcitrant witnesses actually undermine the broader interests of the People of the United States.

Stated simply: The Court has now declared for the first time in history that the most powerful official in the United States can (under circumstances yet to be fully determined) become a law unto himself. As we enter this uncharted territory, the People, in their wisdom, will need to remain ever attentive, consistently fulfilling their established role in our constitutional democracy, and thus collectively serving as the ultimate safeguard against any chaos spawned by this Court’s decision. For, like our democracy, our Constitution is “the creature of their will, and lives only by their will.”

Unfortunately for DOJ... these contentions about the relative power of the federal courts, congressional committees, and the President distort established separation-of-powers principles beyond all recognition. Thus, ultimately, the arguments that DOJ advances to support its claim of absolute testimonial immunity for senior-level presidential aides transgress core constitutional truths...