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Justice Jackson’s ‘Turning Japanese’ Argument Is So Dumb It Stuns

On Tuesday, Ketanji Brown Jackson once again showed us that you don’t have to understand the law to be a Supreme Court justice.

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Hey, stupid kids. Be of good cheer! You’re not going to win a Nobel Prize in physics or solve any puzzles on The Wheel of Fortune, but you can still grow up to be a United States Supreme Court Justice. Just like Ketanji Brown Jackson did. 

During Tuesday’s oral arguments on a widely-watched birthright citizenship case, Jackson once again showed that a basic understanding of the law is no longer a prerequisite to serve on the nation’s highest court. No three words uttered together stir more terror in the hearts of men as KJB declaring, “I was thinking …” 

On Tuesday, Brown was thinking about her pickpocket “allegiance” to Japan. 

The case before SCOTUS was Trump v. Barbara, testing the president’s executive order meant to end birthright citizenship — the insane reading of the constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment that virtually anyone born in the United States is magically a U.S. citizen. President Donald Trump, who showed up to watch the court weigh in on his stalled executive order, later posted on his Truth Social platform that the United States is “the only Country in the World STUPID enough to allow ‘Birthright’ Citizenship!”

Not quite. According to Pew Research, 32 other countries provide automatic birthright citizenship similar to the U.S. I’m not sure how many people are crossing the border into Venezuela or Chad — or Canada for the love of God — for unrestricted birthright citizenship. 

Trump’s point is well taken, though. The U.S. is as stupid as Canada and the other Third World countries on the list. And its been stupid on anchor babies since the late 19th century when the Supreme Court went all-in on the insanity that is birthright citizenship. 

Speaking of stupid … 

Jackson struggled all morning with the intent of the Fourteenth Amendment. Ratified in 1868, the civil rights amendment was written to grant citizenship to freed slaves and their children, not the children of millions of illegal immigrants looking for a pass to stay. Or “birth tourists.” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer noted that for decades after the amendment took effect, it was widely  understood that children born to temporary workers in the United States were not citizens. 

In what will henceforth be knowns as the “Turning Japanese, I really think so” precedent, Jackson mused that if she stole a wallet while in Japan, she would be bound by her “allegiance” to the country’s criminal laws and the consequences therein. The bizarre train of logic began with those three dangerous words. 

“I was thinking, I, a U.S. citizen am visiting Japan. And what it means is that if I steal someone’s wallet in Japan, the Japanese authorities can arrest me and prosecute me,” Jackson said. “It’s allegiance meaning can they control you as a matter of law. I can also rely on them, if my wallet is stolen, to, you know, under Japanese law, go and prosecute the person who has stolen it.”

”So there’s this relationship, even though I’m just a temporary traveler, I’m just on vacation in Japan, I’m still locally owing allegiance in that sense.”

In a very real sense that makes no sense. Visitors are bound by the laws of the countries in which they travel. Kind of like millions of “undocumented” migrants are bound — or should be bound — by U.S. immigration law. They don’t owe an allegiance to the country that should be enforcing said laws. And therein lies a huge problem with birthright citizenship. 

KBJ: "If I steal a wallet in Japan, I am subject to Japanese laws…in a sense, it's allegiance." pic.twitter.com/AaQGsgW2IT— Election Wizard (@ElectionWiz) April 1, 2026

KBJ: "If I steal a wallet in Japan, I am subject to Japanese laws…in a sense, it's allegiance." pic.twitter.com/AaQGsgW2IT

Even Jackson’s far-left fellow justices on the court wanted to drop the Billy Madison line on her.

‘Stupid is as Stupid Does’

The woman who said she wasn’t qualified to define what a woman is because she is “not a biologist” has dented the esteemed high court’s reputation with a growing list of head-scratching bench questions and legal arguments. 

The day before she unleashed the “Turning Japanese” defense, Jackson stood as the lone dissenting vote in a First Amendment case. In the 8-1 ruling, the court found a Colorado law violated the speech rights of counselors by banning them from practicing talk therapy to help patients overcome gender dysphoria. 

Jackson said the mental health professionals have no free speech rights if said speech runs counter to a state’s gender identity agenda. She has expressed grave concerns about the First Amendment “hamstringing” government. Jackson has abandoned her states’ rights stance when progressive national policy is on the line. 

I don’t know what the Supreme Court will decide on the question of birthright citizenship. But I know this, if the courts continue to enforce practices that increase chaos, destruction, and division within the United States, like allowing 1.5 million Chinese nationals to vote…— Megan Basham (@megbasham) April 1, 2026

I don’t know what the Supreme Court will decide on the question of birthright citizenship. But I know this, if the courts continue to enforce practices that increase chaos, destruction, and division within the United States, like allowing 1.5 million Chinese nationals to vote…

As The Federalist’s Elle Purnell wrote, “The gist of Jackson’s dissent is that [counselor] Kaley Chiles needs to shut up and trust the science. Transgender orthodoxy is just ‘facts and data,’ dontcha know. Just like the ‘facts and data’ that were used to bludgeon society with Covid vaccine mandates, mask orders, and stay-at-home edicts, transgender ‘science’ may not be questioned.” 

The DEI justice has twisted “facts” in her bench activism for discriminatory affirmative action policies. 

She’s hobnobbed with the glitterati at the ICE-bashing Grammys. Of course the useful idiots of corporate media had nothing to say about Jackson’s award show attendance, while it has gone apoplectic over Trump’s precedent-setting attendance at Supreme Court oral arguments. 

Jackson has a lot to say, much of it not constrained by law or logic. As The Hill’s Gavel blog reported, Jackson has far outpaced her fellow justices in the sheer volume of words  spoken during oral arguments. 

As The Federalist’s Senior Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland put it in an X post Tuesday, the solicitor general failed to employ his most effective argument against birthright citizenship: Jackson’s defense of it.

Trump card: The Solicitor General didn’t use his most effective argument this morning:  “And lastly, I’d ask the Justices to remember that you cannot rule against the Government without agreeing with Justice Jackson.”— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) April 1, 2026

Trump card: The Solicitor General didn’t use his most effective argument this morning:  “And lastly, I’d ask the Justices to remember that you cannot rule against the Government without agreeing with Justice Jackson.”

As Forrest Gump told us, stupid is as stupid does. 

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