DALLAS — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson urged Americans on Tuesday to defend the judicial system against salvos that jeopardize its independence, warning that such threats have the potential to do serious damage to American democracy.

“Equal justice under law is a key tenet to freedom in our society, and in order to have that, you have to have an independent judiciary — one that is not beholden to the political branches or beholden to people,” Jackson said during an appearance before hundreds of students at Southern Methodist University. “I just wish that people really focused on that and, therefore, stood up in some ways for the judiciary, when people — judges are being attacked and undermined, that is really an attack on our society.”

Jackson did not mention any specific attacks on the judiciary, although since the Supreme Court struck down a key aspect of President Donald Trump’s tariff policy earlier this year, Trump has unleashed an unusually caustic series of attacks on the three members of the court’s conservative majority who joined the liberal justices in the 6-3 ruling.

Trump has also called for the impeachment of district court judges who have ruled against the administration on other issues, like deporting alleged gang members to a notorious anti-terrorism prison in El Salvador without due process. Those calls prompted Chief Justice John Roberts to declare publicly that he believes that judges should not face impeachment due to disagreement with their rulings.

During a conference in Puerto Rico a year ago, Jackson offered a similar warning about attempts to intimidate the judiciary. However, she delivered that message to a group of federal judges, while her latest comments were more squarely aimed at encouraging the public to counter intrusions on judges’ autonomy.

At Jackson’s pair of appearances at SMU on Tuesday, she did not comment directly on an unusually contentious series of opinions released recently by the high court, some of which contained caustic exchanges between conservative justices and their junior-most colleague.

Just last week, after Jackson objected to the high court agreeing to speed up the impact of a recent Voting Rights Act ruling so that it would be more likely to go into effect this year, a trio of conservative justices took umbrage at her claim that they were allowing “principles [to] give way to power.”

Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, called one of her claims “baseless and insulting” and accused her of leveling “a groundless and utterly irresponsible charge.”

Asked Tuesday what the atmosphere is like at the court, Jackson said, “Yeah, no, it’s fine.”

That response prompted skeptical laughter from the crowd, but Jackson insisted that the justices’ personal dealings are friendly.

“We are very good at compartmentalizing. It's part of the job,” she said. “In the world of law and the world of writing your opinions, you're going to disagree, and you have the opportunity to express your views in the context of your opinions, but in our day-to-day interactions, none of us takes it personally, and we get along just fine.”

During Jackson’s later appearance before an older crowd attending a university lecture series, interviewer Tina Perry mentioned that Jackson described having to remind herself at her swearing-in that the event was, in fact, real.

“I do that a lot — these days,” Jackson said with a laugh quickly echoed by the audience.

Speaking to the students, Jackson described the high court as a place of formality and of rituals she was never privy to as a clerk to Justice Stephen Breyer, whom she replaced in 2022 after being nominated by President Joe Biden. She also acknowledged chafing at some of the Supreme Court’s traditions, like the practice of justices speaking in seniority order at their closed-door conferences.

“'I’m the junior justice, so it's not my favorite part, but we do sort of proceed in a very formalistic way,” she said.

Some in attendance at Jackson’s later event Tuesday expressed disappointment that she focused almost exclusively on her personal story and memoir and didn’t discuss any of the court’s recent rulings, such as one last month that sharply narrowed the Voting Rights Act.

“I wish we heard more about the court,” said Madeline McClure, a child safety advocate from Dallas. “She’s got an excellent life story, but I was hoping for at least a little bit of a view into behind the scenes at the court.”