In an interview on CBS News Sunday Morning, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she is “prepared” for the 2024 presidential election to go before the Supreme Court.
As part of the 10-minute interview with CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell, Jackson, at first, jokingly replied to a question about being prepared for that scenario as former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris seem to be headed for a closely contested November election.
“Are you prepared that this election could end up in front of the Supreme Court?” O’Donnell asked.
“As prepared as anyone can be,” Jackson said with a laugh before asking O’Donnell, “Are you prepared for all of the news cycles that you are getting as a result of this election?”
O’Donnell responded “no” as Jackson quipped “no, exactly,” as the two continued to laugh.
Then, Jackson said, stoically, “There are legal issues that arise out of the political process. So, the Supreme Court has to be prepared to respond if that should be necessary.”
Newsweek has emailed the Trump and Harris campaigns Sunday night for comment.
In the 2000 presidential election, George W. Bush, a Republican, was ultimately declared the winner over former Vice President Al Gore, a Democrat, after the race came down to about 500 votes in Florida. Although Gore wanted to push forward with recounts, the Supreme Court, which was controlled by conservative justices at the time, ruled that vote counting standards in Florida were not consistent and halted a recount ordered by Florida’s Supreme Court.
Conservative Supreme Court justices currently outnumber their liberal cohorts, 6-3. Three of the conservative justices, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, were appointed by Trump during his first presidential term. Jackson, appointed by President Joe Biden, is among the liberal justices.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is seen on September 15, 2023, in Birmingham, Alabama. In an interview with CBS News Sunday Morning, Jackson said she is “prepared” for the 2024 presidential election to go before the Supreme Court.
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But that ideological breakdown doesn’t necessarily predict future decisions.
In recent rulings, Barrett has slowly inched closer to the middle, battling Chief Justice John Roberts to be the court’s ideological center. Last week, she sided with liberal justices in an Arizona voting rights case.
In the interview with O’Donnell, Jackson openly expressed “concern” about the Court’s recent presidential immunity ruling.
In a decision handed down on July 1, the Supreme Court ruled that sitting presidents are immune from prosecution of alleged crimes that take place while performing certain official acts, siding partially with Trump in his quest to quash all of his recent legal troubles.
Jackson and her two fellow liberals, Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan, dissented from the decision, while all six conservative justices voted in favor. In Sunday’s interview, Jackson said she felt that the decision gave Trump unwarranted special treatment in criminal matters.
“I was concerned about a system that appeared to provide immunity for one individual under one set of circumstances, when we have a criminal justice system that had ordinarily treated everyone the same,” Jackson said.
In her written dissent of the immunity decision, Jackson warned that presidents could be “exempt from legal liability for murder, assault, theft, fraud, or any other reprehensible and outlawed criminal act,” as long as they claimed their actions were “official acts.”
“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,” Jackson wrote. “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,” she added.
On Tuesday, Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel Jack Smith filed a revised indictment against Trump in his federal election interference case.
Trump currently faces four federal charges in the case into his alleged attempts to thwart the 2020 election results, which the former president has claimed was stolen from him via widespread voter fraud despite a lack of substantial evidence.
The charges include conspiracy to defraud the U.S., conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, attempting to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges and alleges the case is politically motivated.
In addition, Trump was indicted in Georgia for alleged election fraud.
In August 2023, Fani Willis, district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, which covers most of Atlanta, indicted Trump and 18 of his allies for alleged fraud in the state involving the 2020 presidential election. All of the accused pleaded not guilty, but at least four are now cooperating with authorities.
In a new court filing on Monday, Trump attorney Steven Sadow argued that Willis’ election interference case against the former president should be dismissed in part because he believes Willis has been prejudiced against Trump.
