'Sort of like a war' at Supreme Court as liberals clash over approach to 'generational struggle'

Although Democrats have won the popular vote in most of the United States' post-1980s presidential elections — the exceptions included George W. Bush in 2004 and Donald Trump in 2024 — they have had terrible luck with the U.S. Supreme Court, where GOP-appointed justices now enjoy a 6-3 hard-right supermajority.

Much of the reporting on the High Court's divisions has focused on ideological clashes between that supermajority and the three Democratic appointees: Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson (the lone Joe Biden appointee). But the New York Times' Jodi Kantor, in an article published on Halloween 2025, describes another SCOTUS conflict: the disagreements among Barack Obama appointees Sotomayor and Kagan and lone Joe Biden appointee Jackson.

"Ever since Justice Jackson arrived in 2022," Kantor reports, "friction has been building: between her and Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, who are more aligned strategically, and between her and the rest of the Court, according to more than a dozen associates of the justices, including both liberals and conservatives…. The three liberal justices declined to comment. But increasingly, the tensions are spilling out in opinions. ... Like many others across the left in the era of Donald J. Trump, the liberal justices are in a generational and philosophical struggle over whether to safeguard institutions from within or protest their decline. But unlike politicians, they are doing so in a sealed world so tradition-bound and decorous that closing an opinion 'I dissent' instead of 'I respectfully dissent' is considered a dramatic statement."

The Times reporter continues, "Their differing approaches will now be tested in a term with vast consequences. The Court has been granting (President Donald) Trump enormous — but mostly temporary — latitude. Climactic fights over his policies and power are just ahead. Next week, the justices will consider whether he can unilaterally impose tariffs."

One of Jackson's qualities, Kantor stresses, is her "outspokenness" — while Kagan is "displaying her frustration only in flashes."

Washington University law professor Daniel Epps, a law professor at Washington University, told the Times, "You can try to hold the center together, and assume that people on the other side are acting in good faith, and try to maintain common ground, in the name of preserving the rule of law. Or you can raise the fire alarm. It's sort of like war. If you're outgunned, do you try diplomacy or even appeasement, or do you make a noble charge and possibly get blown away?"

Read Jodi Kantor's full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).