Justice Jackson’s Idiotic “Progressive Originalism”

According to the establishment, new Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson “schooled” the rest of America on the 14th Amendment last week.

Slate called this “progressive originalism.”

But did she really “school” anyone on anything?

Hardly.

Justice Jackson supposedly took the Alabama Solicitor General to task for insisting that the 14th Amendment and the Constitution are “race blind.”

She correctly asserted that the 1866 Civil Rights Act directly reference race as a determining factor in enforcement. Same for the 14th Amendment, at least in part.

She read the text from both documents along with work from the committee that drafted the act in 1866 to support her claims.

But she omitted what the author of the bill said about it during the debates over its passage, namely that “civil rights” only extended to access to courts and the protection of property.

If you listened to Judge Jackson, you would think these 1866 Republicans favored modern conceptions of civil rights.

They also made clear that “political” rights were not covered by either bill.

In other words, she failed in her attempt to “school” anyone.

But of course, this laughable attempt at “originalism” was great Podcast fodder. i cover it on episode 717 of The Brion McClanahan Show.