No, this post is not about the Barrett Jackson classic car auctions.  Instead it’s about associate justices Barrett and Jackson on the United States Supreme Court.

With an opinion authored by Justice Barrett, the Supreme Court 86’ed the concept of nationwide injunctions issued by federal courts, absent the procedural requirements of class actions.  Justice Barrett, gave a detailed history of federal courts and injunctions.  She tackled head on the “policy” aspects of nationwide injunctions saying that the court is not concerned with policy arguments when applying specific provisions of the court’s statutory authority.  

Now the interesting part.  After putting the kibosh on nationwide injunctions, Justice Barrett took off on Justice Jackson’s dissent and dunked on her in every conceivable way.  This portion of her opinion is irrelevant to the result and can only be seen as a smack down.  

Recently Justice Barrett has been viewed as a swing vote as she sided with the liberal wing in a few cases.  Any idea that Barrett is a reliable swing vote is put to rest.  She seems to be firmly imbedded in strict application of law and is not influenced by ideology.  New is her acerbic language toward Justice Jackson.  That would certainly make the weekly judicial conferences interesting.

Look at pages 19-25 of the opinion.   

SUPREMECOURT.GOV "https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a884_8n59.pdf"