https://www.wsj.com/articles/neil-gorsuc..._lead_pos5

Interesting comments by Gorsuch in an article about a book one of his aides wrote:

"...What has driven the change? “I’m no social scientist. I’m no psychologist. But I think it has something to do with trust,” Justice Gorsuch says. In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at how Americans solved problems in their communities. “We trusted one another, and we worked with one another, and we debated and we talked with one another,” the justice says. If people no longer trust their neighbors, much less folks across the town or the state, where do they turn?

Whatever the cause, he worries that the U.S., with its accumulated statutory commands and regulatory crimes, is on the far side of what one might call the legal Laffer curve. “Too little law poses problems,” he says. “I love my libertarian friends, but I am not with them on anarchy, OK? Law is essential.” And yet: “Too much law actually winds up making people fear law rather than respect law, fear their institutions rather than love their institutions.”

He got to thinking about this while noticing that “good people trying to do the right thing, and not trying to hurt anybody, are just all of a sudden getting whacked.” His co-author, Ms. Nitze, interviewed some of the litigants in these cases. At one point Justice Gorsuch mentions that America’s bureaucratic demands haven’t always been clear even to him. His wife, whom he met while a student at Oxford, is a naturalized citizen from England: “There’s a lot of paperwork to get your wife in this country, and I can’t fill it all out properly, I learned that...."”

Trump did a lousy job with his cabinet, but an excellent job picking justices. I hope he gets to pick 2 or 3 more.

'Be Careful': Justice Neil Gorsuch on Proposed Supreme Court Reforms

Quote:Fresh off his unsurprising yet nevertheless momentous decision to bow out of the 2024 race, President Joe Biden announced his grand plans for the remainder of his (one and only) presidential term. Among those: proposed Supreme Court reforms.

The proposed reforms include Supreme Court term limits and a formal code of conduct, in addition to a constitutional amendment prohibiting criminal immunity for former presidents.

As streiff rightly noted in his OpEd linked above, here's what's driving Biden's push for these proposed reforms:

It is in direct response to two related factors. The 6-3 conservative majority does not seem to be going anywhere. If Trump wins, that majority will probably be cemented for at least another generation. The Supreme Court has proven to be the bulwark defending our civil liberties from the fascistic tendencies of Biden and his supporters. The second factor is that the Supreme Court has made rulings curtailing the ability of federal agencies to rule by fiat (Loper Bright) and has attacked one of the sacraments of the Democrats' secular religion by ruling that abortion is not a constitutional right (Dobbs). Along the way, it limited the ability of Democrats to use the legal system to harass and imprison opposing politicians by recognizing that a president has some degree of immunity for official acts.

On Sunday, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sat down with Fox News Sunday's Shannon Bream to discuss his new book, "Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law." During their conversation, Bream also asked Gorsuch to share his thoughts regarding the recent reforms proposed, and Gorsuch, wise owl that he is, responded by side-stepping the political ramifications while simultaneously driving home the import of pushing for significant changes. Watch:

From their exchange:

BREAM: You are not in a bubble here at the court. There are real-world events happening. The president has proposed now changes to the court, supported, it appears, by [a] vice president who looks like she's going to be the Democratic nominee. How does the court feel about potential changes — term limits, ethics codes that are enforced by someone in ways that it isn't now?

GORSUCH: Shannon, you're not going to be surprised that I'm not going to get into what is now a political issue during a presidential election year. I don't think that would be helpful.

I have one thought to add: It is that the independent judiciary means — what does it mean to you as an American? It means that when you're unpopular, you can get a fair hearing under the law and under the Constitution. If you're in the majority, you don't need judges and juries to hear you and protect your rights — you're popular.

It's there for the moments when the spotlight's on you, when the government's coming after you. And don't you want a ferociously independent judge and a jury of your peers to make those decisions? Isn't that your right as an American? And so, I just say, "Be careful."

Gorsuch is exactly right. The independence of the judiciary is critical to preserving the American system of governance, and chipping (or hacking) away at that independence — as the proposed reforms would inevitably do — is shortsighted and ill-advised. The saving grace in all this is that Biden doesn't have the wherewithal — logistically or politically — to ram such changes through, though the Democrats will undoubtedly bang the drum on it from now 'til the election. Just one more arrow in their quiver of threats to democracy aimed, ostensibly, at "preserving democracy."

Neil Gorsuch Decimates CBS News Reporter Pushing Left-Wing Talking Points

Quote:As a Supreme Court Justice, Neil Gorsuch typically stays out of the public eye. His job is to interpret the law, not please the howling voices in the political world. Unfortunately, the Biden-Harris administration has decided to force the issue by making a series of ludicrous and counter-productive proposals to "reform" the high court, not because they genuinely care, but because they desire total control over the lives of Americans.

The details boil down to 18-year term limits and an enforceable "ethics code." Naturally, the term limit being proposed would immediately boot off multiple conservatives while ensuring the court gains a strong liberal majority. What a coincidence, right?

With that now being battled over in the political sphere, the press is doing what it always does, which is to parrot talking points in support of whatever the Democrat position is. Gorsuch found himself on the receiving end of that in a recent interview with CBS News. The justice responded by decimating the arguments being made.

The following clips and transcripts are courtesy of my friend Curtis Houck over at Newsbusters.

GORSUCH: I read the other day that...I agreed with Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan, and Justice Jackson something like 45 percent of the time. That’s the court I know.

GARRETT: But there are people who watch this right now and say I thought I understood what Roe v. Wade meant in our country. I thought I understood what affirmative action in college admission meant, and this court told me I didn’t understand what that meant and I wrongly relied on things that I thought were settled. What would you say to those?

GORSUCH: I would say those are deeply complex legal questions on which reasonable minds can, of course, and do disagree. And that when it comes to Roe v. Wade, for example, what did the court decide? Decided that we the people should answer that question, not nine people sitting in Washington, D.C.

Let me start by saying that Garrett's premise is nonsensical. Just because a bad decision existed prior does not mean that decision is worthy of preservation. The majority opinion in Roe v. Wade was a joke written, relying almost exclusively on the whims of then-Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was desperately trying to find a middle ground for political reasons. There was no actual constitutional right to an abortion, and to claim the right to privacy somehow covered it has never passed legitimate legal muster.

As Gorsuch explains, all the Supreme Court did in overturning the precedent set by Roe v. Wade was return the decision to the voters in each state. That should be far preferable to anyone who values "democracy" than unelected judges creating legal precedent out of whole cloth simply to appease one side of the political aisle.

Garrett wasn't satisfied with that answer, though, and he then pressed Gorsuch on affirmative action.

GARRETT: How about affirmative action?

GORSUCH: Much the same thing. What did we decide? We decided that all people are created equal, that it’s not acceptable in this country to discriminate on the basis of race.

Again, how is this even a discussion in 2024? Affirmative action was legalized discrimination based on race. A white person should no more be punished for their skin color than a black person. Historical oppression should play no role in modern-day decisions regarding people with equal rights. That the press thinks that such a ruling is wrong is an indictment on them, not the Supreme Court.

Still, Garrett kept going, making yet another emotional appeal.

GARRETT: And, for those who would say but I feel something’s been ripped away from me, you would say?

GORSUCH: I would say that we’re taking it back to you. In a democracy, you’re in the driver’s seat. You’re the sovereign. Those famous three first words of the Constitution empower you. Do you really want me deciding everything for you?

GARRETT: And for a woman in a state where she no longer has the rights she once relied on, is that cold comfort?

GORSUCH: Major, all I can say is I don’t know better than you do on these questions. And that most major western democracies have decided these questions through the ballot box.

Gorsuch hits the nail on the head again. It is not his job to make up "rights" that give "comfort" to women who want abortions. If Americans want that, they should be forced to own it through their vote, unable to hide behind the cover of a flawed legal judgment from half a century prior.

With that said, notice what Garrett never bothers to ask about throughout the interview. While he continually makes appeals to emotion, he doesn't give any credence to what the law actually says. Wouldn't that be the most important factor in any Supreme Court decision?

Expectedly, once the interview segment ended, the in-studio team took their shots without Gorsuch there to embarrass them as well.

GARRETT: Gorsuch does not appear at all troubled by the decline in public confidence in the Supreme Court or the real-world ramifications of overturning decades of legal precedent. Comfort, with such contradictions, of course, is one of the things that comes with a lifetime appointment to the highest judicial perch in the land.

KING: Yeah, many people are questioning whether it should be a lifetime appointment.

Gayle King might as well be on the White House payroll. The "many people" who are questioning lifetime appointments are Joe Biden and Kamala Harris along with a slew of Democratic Party politicians. To whatever extent that has trickled into the public consciousness is completely inorganic.

The Supreme Court does not exist to win popularity contests. On the contrary, it was designed from the founding to rule absent of political pressure. Lifetime appointments are part of that equation as they relieve the justices of any concern about post-court opportunities and influences.

DUTHIERS: I appreciate you pushing back on those issues because I thought it was sort of telling that the associate justice said, do you want me deciding everything for you? If you’re a woman, you will say — but you have decided. Even though you’re suggesting that you’re sending it back to the people, the Court made those decisions that had been precedents for over 50 years.

GARRETT: And what was once relied upon can no longer be. That’s the change.

I'm trying to remain professional, but part of me just wants to call Vladimir Duthiers an imbecile and leave it at that. His reasoning is so ridiculous as to be worthy of nothing but mockery. Would he say the same about the precedent that once allowed segregation of schools? What about the precedent that once restricted personhood for black Americans? The idea that a precedent is untouchable simply because it exists is moronic. What matters is proper legal interpretation of the law. Nothing more, nothing less.

In the end, what this Gorsuch interview shows is that Democrats have no actual argument. They are simply emoting at any given point, wrapping themselves in contradictions to garner the political outcome they want in the moment. The Supreme Court stands in the way of that, and that's why they are trying to destroy it.

(08-04-2024 05:08 PM)bullet Wrote:  https://www.wsj.com/articles/neil-gorsuc..._lead_pos5

Interesting comments by Gorsuch in an article about a book one of his aides wrote:

"...What has driven the change? “I’m no social scientist. I’m no psychologist. But I think it has something to do with trust,” Justice Gorsuch says. In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at how Americans solved problems in their communities. “We trusted one another, and we worked with one another, and we debated and we talked with one another,” the justice says. If people no longer trust their neighbors, much less folks across the town or the state, where do they turn?

Whatever the cause, he worries that the U.S., with its accumulated statutory commands and regulatory crimes, is on the far side of what one might call the legal Laffer curve. “Too little law poses problems,” he says. “I love my libertarian friends, but I am not with them on anarchy, OK? Law is essential.” And yet: “Too much law actually winds up making people fear law rather than respect law, fear their institutions rather than love their institutions.”

He got to thinking about this while noticing that “good people trying to do the right thing, and not trying to hurt anybody, are just all of a sudden getting whacked.” His co-author, Ms. Nitze, interviewed some of the litigants in these cases. At one point Justice Gorsuch mentions that America’s bureaucratic demands haven’t always been clear even to him. His wife, whom he met while a student at Oxford, is a naturalized citizen from England: “There’s a lot of paperwork to get your wife in this country, and I can’t fill it all out properly, I learned that...."”

When common sense solutions to problems get regulated in the negative, there are too damn many statutes and too many fools creating them!