Jackson: SCOTUS Risks Being Political  05/19 06:23

   

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said Monday that the 
Supreme Court risks being seen as political in the wake of a major voting 
rights decision.

   She spoke after writing a solo dissent from the court's decision allowing 
Louisiana to move quickly to use new maps after the court's conservative 
majority struck down a majority-Black district and weakened the Voting Rights 
Act.

   "Public confidence is really all the judiciary has," she said at a talk 
before the American Law Institute in Washington, D.C.

   "Everyone believes the court system is outside the political sphere. I think 
that means it's incumbent on us to do things, to act in ways, that shore up 
public confidence," she said.

   Polling has shown public trust in the Supreme Court at historic lows in 
recent years, and Chief Justice John Roberts has separately bemoaned a 
perception that the justices are "political actors," calling it a 
misunderstanding.

   Jackson has become a frequent dissenter on the Supreme Court, joining her 
liberal colleagues last month to oppose the 6-3 decision that hollowed out the 
Voting Rights Act and later writing for herself to protest an order allowing 
Louisiana to use new maps even though early primary voting had already begun. 
She said the court had "spawned chaos" amid a fierce nationwide redistricting 
battle.

   Three of her conservative colleagues on the court forcefully disagreed, 
calling her criticism "baseless" and saying accusations of partisanship aren't 
justified. The alternative, they wrote, would have been to allow an election 
under a map found to be unconstitutional.