Her sharpest words were not in the body of her opinion. They were tucked away in a footnote.

. . .

The footnote in question can be found in Trump v Casa, the June ruling that gave a big boost to Donald Trump by clipping the wings of federal judges and limiting their use of nationwide injunctions to block the president’s worst excesses.

Over 21 pages of taut dissent against Casa, Jackson decried the 6-3 ruling as “an existential threat to the rule of law” and a “sad day for America”. The ruling was “profoundly dangerous”, she wrote, because it gives Trump permission “to wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate”.

Looking ahead, she added the decision would “surely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise”.

This is strong medicine. But then there is footnote No 5, which takes her dissent to another level entirely.

. . .