Andrea Widburg called it “the nastiest judge-on-judge smackdown I’ve ever seen.” She wasn’t wrong.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s rebuke of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in Trump v. CASA, Inc. was sweeping and ferocious—and for good reason.

Jackson’s dissent did not merely differ in tone or jurisprudence. It was a judicial manifesto, a radical blueprint to recast the federal judiciary as the final, universal enforcer of national policy.

Justice Barrett met fire with fire—and then buried the dissent beneath the ash.

As someone who’s served as a statewide chief judicial officer—writing both majority opinions and dissents—I’ve seen legal jousting from both sides of the bench. There are times when a sharply worded opinion is not just warranted but necessary—especially when a colleague misapprehends the law or substitutes political conviction for legal constraint. And Justice Jackson had this one coming.

More importantly, for originalists and legal conservatives like myself—who have grown deeply frustrated by the overtly partisan efforts to hamstring the duly-elected president of the United States—this moment suggests we may finally be turning a corner.

The era of noxious lawfare and trial court fiat may, at last, be waning. Dum Spiro Spero is the proud motto of the great state of South Carolina: “While I breathe, I hope.”

Take a deep breath, everyone.

Jackson’s dissent is built on an expansive—and dangerous—claim: that once any federal court finds executive conduct unlawful, the entire Executive Branch must halt that conduct universally.

In other words, the reasoning of a single unelected judge—often in a jurisdiction strategically selected by the progressive legal cartel—should carry the force of law everywhere.

Even more troubling, Jackson advocates for these universal injunctions not after full proceedings but at the preliminary stage—before final judgment on the merits, even if the federal government has had no full opportunity to defend its position, introduce evidence, or pursue appellate relief.

In effect, a single judge can dictate how laws are enforced, when and where they're implemented, and against whom—indefinitely. It overrides the elected branches and subordinates national policy to the personal philosophy of one district court.

What does that sound like to you?

Barrett exposed the problem with surgical clarity:

Justice Jackson appears to believe that the reasoning behind any court order demands ‘universal adherence,’ at least where the Executive is concerned. … In her law-declaring vision of the judicial function, a district court’s opinion is not just persuasive, but has the legal force of a judgment.

Let that sink in: Jackson would treat a single district court’s opinion—usually non-binding even within its district—as a binding national command. In her vision, the moment one court declares an executive action unlawful, “it has stated what the law requires,” and the Executive must immediately cease enforcement—“against anyone, anywhere.”

Frankly, that’s what we’ve seen on a near-daily basis since—oh, about January 20th?

Justice Barrett called it out:

Rhetoric aside, Justice Jackson’s position is difficult to pin down. … [But] its logic does not depend on the entry of a universal injunction.

She skips over [the statutory analysis] … because analyzing the governing statute involves boring ‘legalese.’ … What matters is how the judiciary may constrain the Executive.

Justice Barrett understood what was at stake—not just the outcome but the structure of constitutional governance. She reminded the legal world that “it is a federal court’s judgment, not its opinion, that remedies an injury.”

And she reaffirmed that universal injunctions—especially from trial courts—were historically nonexistent for most of American legal history.

But more than that, she responded to Jackson’s dissent, not with rhetorical flourish but with constitutional force:

Justice Jackson would do well to heed her own admonition: ‘[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.’ … That goes for judges too.

Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.

This was a thunderclap—as it needed to be.

Jackson’s dissent proposed a version of judicial supremacy that would subordinate every other branch and turn the Court’s word into national command—regardless of jurisdiction, doctrine, or statutory constraint.

More and more Americans are asking: What’s the point of elections if one unelected judge can nullify the will of the people—and the president’s constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed”—with a flick of the pen?

That question underscores one of the many manifest dangers of the unrelenting lawfare campaign: to constrain the Executive, legislate from the bench, and sideline the political branches altogether.

Yet, the progressive legal movement now treats the courts as a constitutional chimera—part legislature, part unelected executive overseer—summoned whenever democracy delivers the “wrong” result.

Why? With Congress and the presidency out of reach, there’s no viable path to enact progressive policy by legislation or executive fiat. In immigration law, for example, the Biden-era days of selective non-enforcement and de facto open borders are over.

So, the fallback strategy is clear: run it through the courts—sue until blue.

In essence, this becomes the left’s escape hatch—an institutional workaround to undo conservative governance. When elections are lost, litigation becomes legislation. And when policy offends their ideological sensibilities, the bench becomes a backdoor executive—issuing orders the voters never approved, enforcing priorities the people never chose.

However, democracy is not preserved by vesting power in those who are furthest removed from the people.

You don’t save democracy by doing the most anti-democratic thing imaginable and then trying to dress it up with the noblest of intentions.

The federal district courts are not the minority party’s failsafe when they lose elections.

Simply put: you don’t save democracy by circumventing it. Do that, and America is no longer a constitutional republic.

It becomes something else entirely:

An oligarchy—robed, remote, and unaccountable.

Justice Jackson’s dissent casts the judiciary as the last, best hope of a republic adrift. In her telling, it falls to the courts—unmoored from statute, precedent, and constitutional constraint—to rescue the nation from itself. That’s judicial paternalism.

And the irony is profound: In the name of defending democracy, Jackson proposes dismantling its foundations—substituting judicial edict for the policy choices of democratic elections, and empowering unelected judges to override the two branches whose legitimacy flows directly from the people.

You don’t preserve democracy by handcuffing the branches accountable to voters.

You don’t elevate justice by extinguishing the rule of law.

And you don’t check the Executive branch by crowning the judiciary supreme.

The Framers divided power not to frustrate progress but to protect liberty.

That is the constitutional architecture Jackson’s dissent so casually sweeps aside.

Judicial supremacy, once unleashed, answers to no electorate and respects no balance. It is rule by robe.

Justice Barrett’s majority opinion doesn’t just reject that vision.

It demolished it.

And with this ruling, Justice Barrett didn’t merely rebut a dissent—she reaffirmed the Constitution. And with it, the rightful order of our Republic—and reminded us why that matters.

And if that weren’t enough, she restored hope.

Well done, Justice Barrett.

Charlton Allen is an attorney and former chief executive officer and chief judicial officer of the North Carolina Industrial Commission. He is founder of the Madison Center for Law & Liberty, Inc., editor of The American Salient, and host of the Modern Federalist podcast. His commentary has been featured in American Thinker and linked across multiple RealClear platforms, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearWorld, RealClearDefense, RealClearHistory, and RealClearPolicy. X: @CharltonAllenNC

Image from Grok.

Source link