“Sometimes I just fall in love with the way you ask the question,” Goldberg said as the audience laughed in the middle of Behar’s inquiry.
Whoopi Goldberg looked like a Supreme Court Justice in The View’s season 28 cast photo, and on Wednesday morning she fittingly gave an official ruling on cohost Joy Behar’s line of questioning for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Justice Jackson appeared on the talk show to promote her new memoir, Lovely One, and fielded questions across multiple segments of the episode — including a particularly important (and pointed one) from Behar, who inquired about Americans’ feelings on the current state of the court following a series of controversial decisions, like overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022.
“So, Justice Jackson, I have to ask you this question, because public opinion of the Supreme Court has hit an all-time low. You might notice that in the media,” the 81-year-old asked, pausing when the studio audience lightly laughed.
Behar turned to look off camera when she noticed the stir, and said, “I’m sorry” before a smiling Goldberg spoke up.
“Sometimes I just fall in love with the way you ask the question,” Goldberg told her cohost, while Sunny Hostin added, “She’s a little blunt!”
“Is it too blunt?” Behar asked. “Let me see if I can sugar-coat it: To what do you attribute this, and what can you do or any of you do to turn this around?”
Justice Jackson replied by stressing that “public opinion of the court is really important” because the court is an institution that, unlike other branches of government, isn’t supposed to bestow the opinions of its members in rulings.
“We don’t have any way of enforcing our opinions other than people’s belief that the rule of law is important and that the court is safeguarding it. So, we have to rely in a lot of ways on public opinions. I try to write opinions that will allow the public to understand what’s going on,” Justice Jackson said.
She later added: “I try very carefully in my opinions to stay in my lane as a judge, the understanding that the court is one of the three branches that we don’t do policy decisions, that we are focused on law, I separate out my personal views when I’m actually ruling in a very intentional way in order to make sure that I’m applying the law. I do think it’s our responsibility to reassure the public in our rulings, and those are the kind of things that I try to do.”
Brown Jackson marks the show’s first new guest of season 28, after the program returned Tuesday from a summer hiatus with a brand new set in Manhattan. Other famous interviewees slated to appear throughout September include Governor Josh Shapiro, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Venus Williams, Usher, Kathryn Hahn, Lily Collins, Sebastian Maniscalco, Connie Chung, Joan Vassos, Kristen Bell, Uzo Aduba, Dax Shepard, Katie Ledecky, and Dolly Parton.
