The newest justice on the Supreme Court has no less a vote and voice as the most senior, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has not been shy about using both. But to what end?

At bottom, this case is about whether that action amounts to a structural overhaul that usurps Congress’s policymaking prerogatives—and it is hard to imagine deciding that question in any meaningful way after those changes have happened. Yet, for some reason, this Court sees fit to step in now and release the President’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation.

Harsh words. Justice Jackson’s dissents have regularly used harsh words in condemnation of Trump’s actions. But in Trump v. American Federation of Government Employees, addressing the reduction in force of federal government employees, Jackson dissented alone, with Justice Sotomayor, her usual comrade in dissent, admonishing her to take it down a notch.

I agree with JUSTICE JACKSON that the President cannot restructure federal agencies in a manner inconsistent with congressional mandates. See post, at 13. Here, however, the relevant Executive Order directs agencies to plan reorganizations and reductions in force “consistent with applicable law,” App. to Application for Stay 2a, and the resulting joint memorandum from the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management reiterates as much. The plans themselves are not before this Court, at this stage, and we thus have no occasion to consider whether they can and will be carried out consistent with the constraints of law. I join the Court’s stay because it leaves the District Court free to consider those questions in the first instance.

In other words, Justice Jackson got ahead of herself, dissenting against the ultimate question, whether Trump has the authority to do what he has, in fact, done or tried to do, and the limited issue before the Court of whether the wording that limited his Executive Order to actions “consistent with applicable law” failed to save the order from facial attack.

In a sense, Justice Jackson’s rush to face the underlying problem at issue is understandable. When it comes to Trump’s efforts to recreate the government, there have been two recurring problems. The first is the rush to do as much damage as possible, only later dealing with the consequences of the damage, from violations of law and Constitution to ruining projects, studies and experiments that can’t simply be restarted once blown, to firing people who are needed and have served the government well for false or no reasons at all.

Cleaning up the mess when the case finally finds its way before the Supreme Court is not easy, and often not possible. Justice Jackson, as well as Sotomayor and Kagan, are all too well aware of this, particularly since there is a huge deference chasm between the three and the six justices in the majority. But to the extent her purpose is to push the majority closer to a decision she thinks is right, is it working or is she pushing herself farther away?

Her words echoed a sharp dissent she had issued in late June in a landmark ruling by the court that curtailed the power of federal judges to issue sweeping blocks on Trump administration policies, including pausing President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. The majority, she wrote, was creating “a zone of lawlessness within which the executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes.”

That led to an unusually targeted critique from Justice Amy Coney Barrett, one of the court’s conservatives, who wrote the majority opinion in the case.

“We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself,” Justice Barrett wrote, in an opinion signed by all five of the other Republican appointees.

The issue before Justice Barrett was not whether Trump could reinvent the Fourteenth Amendment by Executive Order, but whether district judges had the inherent authority in equity to issue nationwide injunctions in cases that were not class actions. Much as I disagree with the majority’s take on “more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself,” Justice Barrett’s dismissed of Justice Jackson’s shrill dissent because it failed miserably to provide the critically important counterargument to the majority.

The Court’s decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law.

It is important to recognize that the Executive’s bid to vanquish so-called “universal injunctions” is, at bottom, a request for this Court’s permission to engage in unlawful behavior. When the Government says “do not allow the lower courts to enjoin executive action universally as a remedy for unconstitutional conduct,” what it is actually saying is that the Executive wants to continue doing something that a court has determined violates the Constitution—please allow this. That is some solicitation. With its ruling today, the majority largely grants the Government’s wish. But, in my view, if this country is going to persist as a Nation of laws and not men, the Judiciary has no choice but to deny it.

The problem isn’t that Justice Jackson is necessarily wrong, even if the rhetoric is hyperbolic and shrill. The problem is that Justice Jackson’s dissent fails to provide a lawyerly and persuasive rebuttal to the majority. Yes, it’s all terrible. Yes, the majority is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. But did the Supreme Court just put an end to our “Nation of laws and not men”?

Whether I agree with Justice Jackson and her posse or not, the Supreme Court needs a contrarian voice now more than ever given the nature and breadth of the issues Trump brings to the table. But it needs to be a voice of reason, not hysteria, if Justice Jackson hopes to sway any votes on the Court.