Amy Berman Jackson
How Judge Jackson decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
In APA/ultra vires cases she reads agency-power statutes textually and asks what Congress authorized, not what the agency thinks best -- she will even adopt the challenger's narrowing construction of a rulemaking statute, then test the specific rule against it.
“An agency cannot “act with the force of law without delegated authority from Congress,” ... so “[t]he question . . . is not what the [agency] thinks it should do but what Congress has said it can do.””
In FOIA cases she grants the agency summary judgment where its declarations and Vaughn index adequately justify withholdings or where the requester failed to exhaust -- the agency prevailed on every FOIA summary-judgment motion in this sample.
“Because plaintiff has failed to exhaust his administrative remedies, defendant’s motion for summary judgment will be GRANTED.”
Procedural preferences
She will deny leave to amend as futile rather than allow a doomed pleading: if the proposed new claims could not survive a motion to dismiss, amendment only wastes time and judicial resources.
“[W]hile a court is instructed by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to grant leave to amend a complaint freely, it need not do so where the only result would be to waste time and judicial resources.”
On a removed case, once she dismisses all the federal claims she declines supplemental jurisdiction and remands the remaining state-law claims to D.C. Superior Court rather than keeping them.
“it will grant the District’s motion to dismiss for the reasons explained below and, declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction, will remand the case to D.C. Superior Court.”
Cautions
She enforces a signed settlement/release: claims a plaintiff expressly released cannot be refiled, and a later-asserted breach or fraud theory that is not independently pleaded will not reopen them.
“because plaintiff expressly released the claims she now seeks to bring in Counts One through Seven, the Settlement Agreement acts as a bar for relief in this Court.”
A fraud-in-the-inducement claim must stand independent of the contract; recasting a breach as fraud by alleging the defendant secretly never intended to perform ('fingers crossed') does not state a tort.
“a plaintiff cannot state a “fraud in the inducement claim [that] is indistinguishable from the breach of contract claim except that plaintiff has added a conclusory allegation that [defendant] had its fingers crossed when it executed the contract””
Motion outcomes
Counted from classified signed orders only. Percentages are shown only where the sample is large enough to be meaningful; smaller samples are reported as raw counts.
| Summary judgment N = 6 |
Granted: 5Denied: 1 | counts only |
| Motions to dismiss N = 3 |
Granted: 3 | counts only |
| Motion for leave to amend N = 2 |
Granted in part: 1Denied: 1 | counts only |
A "1 of 1" is one ruling, not a tendency. Treat small samples as illustrative, not predictive.
Signed rulings
A grounded sample of orders signed by this judge, with the verbatim dispositive language.
“the defendants United States Department of Justice and Department of Justice, Office of Information Policy (“OIP”) have filed a motion for summary judgment that is ripe for decision. The Court will grant the motion for the reasons set forth below.”
“This matter is before the Court on the Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss or, in the Alternative, for Summary Judgment. For the reasons discussed below, the Court GRANTS the motion.”
“This matter is before the Court on defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment (ECF No. 11). For the reasons discussed below, the Court GRANTS the motion.”
“For the reasons set forth in more detail below, plaintiff’s motion to amend will be granted in part and denied in part.”
“Because plaintiff has failed to exhaust his administrative remedies, defendant’s motion for summary judgment will be GRANTED.”
“Plaintiff’s motion for leave to amend her complaint [Dkt. # 34] will therefore be DENIED, and defendant’s motion to dismiss [Dkt. # 17] will be GRANTED.”
“Plaintiff’s motion for leave to amend her complaint [Dkt. # 34] will therefore be DENIED, and defendant’s motion to dismiss [Dkt. # 17] will be GRANTED.”
“For the reasons stated above, defendants’ partial summary judgment motion is GRANTED [Dkt. # 47], and plaintiffs’ partial summary judgment motion is DENIED [Dkt. # 12].”
“defendants’ partial summary judgment motion is GRANTED [Dkt. # 47], and plaintiffs’ partial summary judgment motion is DENIED [Dkt. # 12].”
“Pending before the Court on Defendants’ Renewed Motion for Summary Judgment (ECF No. 44). For the reasons discussed below, the motion is GRANTED.”
“The Court agrees that plaintiff has failed to state a federal claim. So it will grant the District’s motion to dismiss for the reasons explained below and, declining to exercise supplemental jurisdiction, will remand the case to D.C. Superior Court.”
Caseload & timing
From public federal docket records for this judge.
Sampled recent assignments (filed 2026, all pending) are heavy on CRIMINAL matters (multiple United States v. <defendant> dockets, including a reopened 1978 case), IMMIGRATION (nature-of-suit 465 -- Cai v. USCIS, Cabrera Rubio v. Blanche, Zhang/Poththuri/EB5 United Ranger v. Mullin/Edlow), and FOIA (895 -- Judicial Watch v. DHS, Tax Analysts v. IRS, Protect Democracy Project v. IRS), plus a contract matter (Williams v. Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center) and a foreign-discovery 1782 (Cerence v. Sony). This is a qualitative character sample, NOT a counted nature-of-suit distribution.