Attacks on Judges Undermine Democracy, Warns Ketanji Brown Jackson

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the Supreme Court’s newest member, denounced on Thursday what she described as “relentless attacks” on judges, and an environment of harassment that “ultimately risks undermining our Constitution and the rule of law.”

“ Across the nation, judges are facing increased threats of not only physical violence, but also professional retaliation just for doing our jobs,” said Justice Jackson, speaking at a conference for judges held in Puerto Rico. “And the attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity.”

Justice Jackson did not mention President Trump by name nor cite any specific attacks against the nation’s judges. However, her remarks came as Mr. Trump and his allies have repeatedly targeted judges who have blocked key pieces of his agenda, even calling for judges who have ruled against him to be impeached.

Those calls drew a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. in March, who described them as “not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”

Threats of physical violence against judges have also been on the rise, with judges facing bomb threats and a rash of delivery of anonymously dispatched pizzas, a prank apparently designed to send a message that their home addresses can be found.

The forceful comments by Justice Jackson were rare for the justice. Since joining the court in 2022, she has focused many of her public appearances on telling the personal story of her rise to become the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.

One notable appearance came in 2023, when she spoke from the pulpit of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham less than three months after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in higher education and offered explicit nod to her own role in history.

But on Thursday, she opened her remarks to a ballroom full of judges, lawyers and jurists by saying that she wanted to address “the elephant in the room.”

She noted that individual district court judges — several of whom have been assigned major cases dealing with Mr. Trump’s actions and faced attacks for their work — face particular pressure in the legal system.

“It can sometimes take raw courage to remain steadfast in doing what the law requires,” she said.

Before her elevation to the appellate court and then the Supreme Court, Justice Jackson served on the district court bench in Washington with Judge James E. Boasberg, who has been a particular target of Mr. Trump’s ire because of his rulings seeking to block the deportation of Venezuelan migrants. The two were also neighbors.

Justice Jackson criticized the targeting of judges for doing their job, and said those attacks have a bigger, more structural impact for the democratic system.

“ A society in which judges are routinely made to fear for their own safety or their own livelihood due to their decisions is one that has substantially departed from the norms of behavior that govern a democratic system,” said Justice Jackson, during her participation as keynote speaker at the First Circuit Judicial Conference. “Attacks on judicial independence is how countries that are not free, not fair, and not rule of law oriented, operate.”

She noted that May 1 is National Law Day, which was marked elsewhere by demonstrations of lawyers protesting Mr. Trump’s attack on the legal profession. Because of the occasion, she said, she was “taking this point of personal privilege to reaffirm the significance of judicial independence and to denounce attacks on judges based on their rules.”

Justice Jackson devoted most of her address to a less formal discussion of her life and her memoir released last year. But she came prepared with written remarks on the rule of law that she said she wanted to address first.

“Having an independent judiciary — defined as judges who are indifferent to improper pressure and determine and decide each case according to the rule of law — is one of the key ingredients” that makes a free and fair society work, she said.

Justice Jackson’s remarks were greeted with a standing ovation.

Abbie VanSickle contributed reporting.