'Scorcher' of a dissent from liberal justice wallops Amy Coney Barrett: experts

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivered a withering dissent Thursday in a little-noticed Supreme Court decision that once again saw the 6-3 conservative majority rule appear to rule against Congress's clear intent, prompting two legal experts to sound alarms about the court's apparent disdain for the legislative branch.

In FS Credit v. Saba Capital, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion, which weakened a statute designed to protect investors by preventing them from suing when certain funds break the law. Barrett dismissed the notion that Congress intended to allow injured parties to sue under the statute — despite lawmakers stating they wanted courts to recognize such a right.

According to Slate legal analysts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, Jackson's dissent was "a scorcher of a principal dissent rebuking the conservative supermajority" over its "open disdain for Congress actually doing the thing Congress is tasked with doing."

Jackson's core argument was to the point, Lithwick and Stern wrote, elaborating that Barrett misread the statute. But more importantly, if the statute was unclear as Barrett claimed, the court should consult legislative history, which overwhelmingly shows Congress intended to create a private right to sue.

"As Jackson pointed out, the relevant House Committee said it 'wishes to make plain that it expects the courts to imply private rights of action under this legislation,'" Stern wrote. "I have seldom seen a clearer expression of legislative intent in a congressional record," which Jackson herself wrote, he pointed out.

The majority's contempt for democratic processes was unmistakable. Jackson made clear as she directly confronted the court's ideological overreach, citing what the two legal experts called a prevailing "academic contempt for Congress."

"Academics may think what they wish of Congress; this court's jurisprudence ought not be grounded in such contempt," Jackson wrote pointedly, capturing the broader pattern: a conservative majority that believes it knows better than elected representatives what laws should mean.

Stern summarized the underlying arrogance of the conservative wing, writing, "We know best. This is what Congress must have meant. And if Congress didn't mean this, it should have, so we'll say it anyway."