CNN’s Scott Jennings blasts Justice Elena Kagan’s hypocrisy on nationwide injunctions

Much discussion and debate followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision disfavoring the use of nationwide injunctions, and while much of the fallout centered on a dissent authored by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of her liberal colleagues on the bench also drew substantial critique.

As the New York Post notes, Justice Elena Kagan received an apt rebuke from CNN commentator Scott Jennings, who pointed out the apparent shift in position on the issue that the jurist has undergone just since President Donald Trump took office.

Jennings holds forth

A rare conservative voice on CNN, Jennings made his thoughts about Kagan known on this week’s episode of Saturday Morning Table for Five.

Observing that Kagan was against nationwide injunctions before she was for them, Jennings offered an unflattering review of the justice’s overall intellectual integrity and honesty.

Pointing out that when Joe Biden was president, Kagan decried the use of nationwide injunctions to restrain the executive, Jennings surmised that she is little more than a partisan hack.

“I was trying to sort out my feelings on this matter, and I came up with a quote from a very smart lawyer, and I just want to quote it, because I think she was right when she said it,” he began.

“‘It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks.’ Justice Elena Kagan in 2022 said that, of course, when we had a democratic president. Now she voted against the decision on Friday,” he mused.

Hackery in stark relief

Underscoring the apparent hypocrisy at play in Kagan’s statements, Jennings stated, “Just goes to show you that some of these folks really are hacks.”

Relieved that such ideological inconsistency did not sway the outcome at the high court, Jennings said that it was a “great day” for the president when the 6-3 decision in his favor was released.

Jennings continued, “I’m glad they went ahead and fixed it because it’s not right that one of these individual district court judges can act like a king or a monarch and stop the elected president from acting,” giving voice to sentiments that could have come from Kagan herself — at least they could have when her preferred politician occupied the White House.

Also standing in opposition to the majority in the case at hand were fellow liberals Sonia Sotomayor and Jackson, whose separate dissent spurred a tidal wave of scorn.

Embarrassing display

Perhaps bolstering Jennings’ argument about the questionable integrity of certain justices on the high court was Jackson’s missive, which Justice Amy Coney Barrett laid bare her — and perhaps other justices’ — skepticism about Joe Biden-nominated Jackson’s ability to do her job, as the Daily Wire noted, suggesting that her colleague’s dissent was startlingly unmoored to any consideration of statute, precedent, or “to any doctrine whatsoever.”

Suggesting that Jackson admitted she could not be bothered to delve into the “legalese” required of statutory or precedential interpretation, Barrett all but declared the dissent unworthy of much attention whatsoever.

White House policy analyst and lawyer May Mailman noted that Barrett’s comment “goes straight after Jackson’s inability to do law,” pointing out the sort of failing about which she — and Jennings — clearly believe the American people ought to be made aware