I have spent much of the past week wading and skimming through a database of nearly 500 district-court opinions—482, to be precise—by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson that my research assistant compiled for me. On the whole, my review has left me with a somewhat more favorable impression of Jackson’s writing ability than I had previously had. That said, it has also strongly confirmed my judgment that Jackson’s prose suffers badly from clunkiness.
Here are some KBJisms:
1. Jackson peppers her opinions with gratuitous instances of the word instant—as in “the instant complaint,” “the instant case,” “the instant action.” Take, for example, this opinion in which she uses instant an amazing twenty times, including in these passages (cleaned up):
The instant amended complaint, which Smith has filed pro se against the United States and 19 federal judges, marks the eleventh lawsuit that Smith has filed stemming from the denial of his admission to the Colorado bar. In the instant 277–page pleading, Smith generally maintains that the judges involved in his latest lawsuit, like those who decided all of his previous actions, have violated the Constitution and international law, and are therefore subject to criminal indictment and removal from the federal bench.
Accordingly, Defendants’ motions to dismiss will be granted and the instant complaint will be dismissed with prejudice. Additionally, in light of the fact that Smith has now initiated eleven separate actions seeking relief for the denial of his bar license, Smith will be enjoined from filing any subsequent actions in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia arising out of the same allegations in the instant amended complaint without first seeking leave of court.
After filing the instant complaint, and prior to the Defendants’ responsive pleadings, Smith filed a twelfth action, which came before this Court as a related case. As Smith made clear in that complaint, the allegations in Smith XII were “quite literally identical” to those in the instant case, and Smith conceded that the Smith XII complaint was a “duplicative filing” meant to keep his claims alive in the event the instant action was dismissed.
Jackson uses the word instant nearly 2000 times across this database, for an average of around five times an opinion.
2. Jackson uses the phrase “Before this Court at present” (or its slight variant “Before the Court at present”) nearly 300 times.
3. Jackson tries to add verve to her prose by characterizing how the parties present their argument. A favorite tic of hers (repeated some 55 times) is to call a party “undaunted”:
She likewise likes to contend that a party “struggles mightily” or “struggles valiantly”:
4. Another stock phrase of KBJ’s is “clear beyond cavil.” There is nothing wrong with that phrase, but she uses it 149 times, and it becomes tiresome around the third or fourth time you encounter it.
To be clear, I am certainly not contending that the quality of Judge Jackson’s prose is outside the range of what has been or ought to be acceptable for a Supreme Court candidate. I agree with legal-writing guru Ross Guberman’s assessment that Leondra Kruger is a much better writer than Jackson. But it’s up to President Biden to decide whether and how much that matters.