REVEALED: America's most powerful judges who protect the Constitution locked in a toxic, secret battle...

Daily Mail​

20 hours ago

A fiery dispute between two of America's most powerful judges was on public display on Friday as the Supreme Court handed down a bombshell opinion on birthright citizenship.
The nine justices who sit on the court frequently tout that relationships between them, despite deep ideological divides, are cordial.
But as they wrestle with issues that have left the US bitterly divided, not all of the spats between them fall directly along their political party lines - hinting that they might just not like each other on a personal level.
The justices' secret personal feuds have seemingly become so fraught that they are counting down the days until the SCOTUS summer recess - which will be a welcome respite from both work and colleagues, according to Chief Justice John Roberts.
This week, the court's liberal wing erupted in spectacular fashion against the six-judge conservative alliance during the biggest ruling of the year thus far.
Trump appointee Justice Amy Coney Barrett, 53, ripped into liberal dissenter Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's arguments in her 6-3 majority opinion in a major birthright citizenship case, with comments that come close to mocking her intellectual rival.
Writing for the conservative majority of the court, Barrett hit back at both Jackson and fellow Justice Sonia Sotomayor who dissented.
Barrett's scorched earth reply took aim at Jackson mostly, spending 900 words to repeatedly rip into the Biden appointee and the court's most junior member.
At one point, Barrett's comments came close to mocking her intellectual rival. She wrote: 'Rhetoric aside, Justice Jackson's position is difficult to pin down.'
Barrett accused Jackson of mounting a 'startling line of attack', which in her view was no 'tethered to any doctrine whatsoever'.
Some lines resemble jabs from a political debate. 'Justice Jackson appears to believe that the reasoning behind any court order demands 'universal adherence,' at least where the Executive is concerned,' goes one.
In perhaps the most sneering comment, Barrett writes: 'We will not dwell on Justice Jackson's argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries' worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself.
'We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.'
Jackson had issued ominous warnings in her own blistering dissent. 'Disaster looms,' she said.
'What I mean by this is that our rights-based legal system can only function properly if the Executive, and everyone else, is always bound by law.
'Today's decision is a seismic shock to that foundational norm. Allowing the Executive to violate the law at its prerogative with respect to anyone who has not yet sued carves out a huge exception—a gash in the basic tenets of our founding charter that could turn out to be a mortal wound,' she wrote.
'What is more, to me, requiring courts themselves to provide the dagger (by giving their imprimatur to the Executive Branch's intermittent lawlessness) makes a mockery of the Judiciary's solemn duty to safeguard the rule of law,' she added.
Jackson, 71, cited a ruling about the 'accretion of dangerous power, and wrote that the Court has 'cleared a path for the Executive to choose law-free action at this perilous moment for our Constitution—right when the Judiciary should be hunkering down to do all it can to preserve the law's constraints.'
She warned of a 'rule-of-kings governing system' compared to a 'rule of law regime.'
'At the very least, I lament that the majority is so caught up in minutiae of the Government's self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot.'
Jackson even began the opening section of her argument by dispensing with the traditional saying that she 'respectfully' dissents.
'With deep disillusionment, I dissent,' she wrote. So did Sotomayor, who wrote simply, 'I dissent.'
The decisions handed down this week have continued a trend of the liberal judges in the court often losing rulings in the most impactful cases.
Sotomayor dissented in the court's 6-3 decision that public school parents must be allowed to take their kids out of lessons involving LGBT books.
In her dissent, she warned of a nightmare for schools, saying the ensuing 'chaos' and 'self-censorship' would threaten to 'end American public education as we know it'.
She said: 'Today's ruling threatens the very essence of public education. The reverberations of the Court's error will be felt, I fear, for generations.'
It is not always as clean cut however, with a decision issued on Friday that endorsed a multibillion dollar fund to expand telephone and broadband services being passed through by a coalition of three conservatives and three liberals.
The fund has been used to expand service to low-income Americans and people living in rural areas and Native American tribal lands, as well as other beneficiaries such as schools and libraries.
The 6-3 ruling overturned a lower court's decision that the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) funding mechanism employing mandatory contributions from telecommunications companies had effectively levied a 'misbegotten tax' on consumers in violation of the U.S. Constitution's vesting of legislative authority in Congress.
The fund has been used to expand service to low-income Americans and people living in rural areas and Native American tribal lands, as well as other beneficiaries such as schools and libraries.
Liberal Justice Elena Kagan, who authored the ruling, wrote that Congress had provided ample guidance and constraints on the Federal Communications Commission operation of the fund.
'We hold that no impermissible transfer of authority has occurred,' wrote Kagan, who was joined by her two fellow liberal justices, as well as conservative Justices John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Three conservative justices - Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito - dissented.
The birthright citizenship ruling was hailed by President Donald Trump on Friday, who told reporters: 'This was a big one. Amazing decision, one we're very happy about. This really brings back the Constitution. This is what it's all about.'
Basking in his victory during an impromptu appearance in the White House briefing room, the president vowed to push through 'many' more of his policies after the court win, including curbs to birthright citizenship.
The president said he would 'promptly file' to advance policies that have previously been blocked by judges.
He said: 'This morning the Supreme Court has delivered a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law in striking down the excessive use of nationwide injunctions to interfere with the normal functioning of the executive branch.'
Friday's case stemmed from an executive order Trump signed as soon as he took office that ended birthright citizenship - the legal principle that U.S. citizenship is automatically granted to individuals upon birth.
Under the directive, children born to parents in the United States illegally or on temporary visas would not automatically become citizens, radically altering the interpretation of the Constitution's 14th Amendment for over 150 years.
The Supreme Court did not rule on the legality of Trump's order purporting to end birthright citizenship and left open a legal path to challenge it.