On stage, Justices Jackson and Kavanaugh argue over the Supreme Court’s emergency orders in favor of Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Brett Kavanaugh sparred Monday over several emergency orders the court issued to allow President Donald Trump to move forward with key parts of his agenda.

It was an unusual setting, with the federal courtroom packed with prominent legal figures, including a federal judge who was handpicked by Trump after blocking part of the president’s anti-immigration push.

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Kavanaugh, 61, and Jackson, 55, sat a few feet apart in the courtroom as they each heard cases when they served on the federal appeals court in Washington. They were only separated by a federal judge who asked them questions. The occasion was an annual lecture in memory of former judge and federal prosecutor Thomas A. Flannery.

Trump appointed Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018. Jackson moved up from the appeals court in 2022, and was appointed by President Joe Biden.

The issue in emergency appeals is whether the policy that was challenged in court should be allowed to take effect while the legal case, which can drag on for years, continues.

Jackson, a frequent dissenter from emergency orders, said Kavanaugh and other conservatives who repeatedly sided with Trump last year are not serving the court or the country well.

“The administration creates a new policy… and then insists that the new policy go into effect immediately, before the appeal is decided,” Jackson said to loud applause. “This increase in the court’s willingness to intervene in cases on the emergency docket represents a real, unfortunate problem.”

She said the court “creates a kind of distorted legal process” by intervening at an early stage of a case and essentially predicting the outcome before the arguments are fully developed.

The Justice Department’s rush to the Supreme Court is not limited to the Trump administration, Kavanaugh said, explaining that as it becomes more difficult to push legislation through Congress, administrations are “going overboard with regulations. Some are legal, some are not.”

He said some critics of recent orders had no objection when judges allowed challenged Biden administration policies to take effect even as lawsuits continued.

Many of the justices in attendance have engaged in high-profile challenges to administration policies, including U.S. District Judge James Boasberg. His conflict with the administration over deportation flights to a notorious prison in El Salvador prompted Trump to call for Boasberg’s impeachment.

Also in attendance was U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who two days ago ruled that Carrie Lake, Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Global Media Agency, did not have the legal authority to take the actions she took to largely dismantle Voice of America.

Neither Jackson nor Kavanaugh mentioned the justices by name. But Jackson repeated the complaint she and the other liberal justices had made in their dissent.

“Should the Supreme Court supervise lower courts when they hear and decide cases?” I asked.

Kavanaugh, who joined an opinion criticizing lower court judges for ignoring Supreme Court rulings, said the cases the justices face are often complex and the cases closed.

“None of us are enjoying this,” he said.