Posted on 02/09/2017 3:49:00 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Judge Neil Gorsuch, nominated by President Donald Trump for a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States, is among the top legal thinkers in the country, but you would never know it from talking to him. Judge Gorsuch is a humble man, and his humility informs his textualist approach to the law and makes him uniquely qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice. I know this because I was once his law clerk.
One of my favorite parts of clerking for Judge Gorsuch was his afternoon ritual with the clerks. Around 4:00 pm every day, the judge would burst into the clerks’ room (unlike most judges, Judge Gorsuch insisted the clerks sit together and work collaboratively), flop down on an old leather chair, and instruct the four of us, “Tell me something I don’t know.”
At first, we dreaded this. Was he looking for us to uncover new facts in our cases? Did he expect us to reach some critical legal insight, each and every day? As it turned out, all the judge wanted was to, quite literally, learn something he didn’t know. In due time this turned into a welcome challenge. At lunch the clerks would sit around and think of trivia, the more esoteric, the better. The judge also loved stories about travel, or foreign cultures, maybe some history now and then. But so too did he like to learn about things going on in our lives, like how were my then-fiancée and I adjusting to life in Denver? Did we do any good hiking? And perhaps most important to Judge Gorsuch, a true native Coloradan, was I doing enough to learn to ski?
Of course we clerks learned more from Judge Gorsuch than he ever did from us. I’ve thought of this frequently the past few days as I hear Judge Gorsuch’s critics pigeonhole him as a mere “textualist.” To many lawyers – including even myself, once upon a time – the “textualist” label has political connotations. But as I learned from Judge Gorsuch, textualism is really what most people expect good lawyers and judges to do: study legal texts (like statutes, contracts and yes, even the Constitution) and make sense of the language in front of them.
Judge Gorsuch’s textualism is borne of his own humility and view of the judicial function. “Judges,” he recently remarked, “should be in the business of declaring what the law is using the traditional tools of interpretation, rather than pronouncing the law as they might wish it to be in light of their own political views.” This is an approach I have tried to adopt in my own legal career. After all, no argument is ever as convincing as “It says so right here.”
Admittedly textualism sounds none too exciting, and it isn’t always. But a humorless grammarian Judge Gorsuch is not. In his opinions, he often engages with tricky texts with both insight and wit. Indeed, working for Judge Gorsuch often reminded me of geeky debates I might have had in college about the semantics of some expression or another. Late one day the judge and I sat in his office debating the grammar of a particularly knotty jurisdictional statute. At one point, he paused and said, “This is what being a lawyer is all about.”
I don’t remember who won that debate about that provision. (It was probably Judge Gorsuch.) But after a year of clerking for Judge Gorsuch, I became convinced that judges should first and foremost be careful readers of legal text – and, for my own benefit, that the best attorneys understand what the words of a legal text actually say.
The views and opinions set forth herein are the personal views or opinions of the author; they do not necessarily reflect views or opinions of the law firm with which he is associated.
Perfect.
Textualism + Humility could lead to too much stare decisis.
I guess it all depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.
Sounds go to me.
After Roberts rewriting Obamacare from the bench this type of approach would be a huge improvement.
Sounds good to me
“the best attorneys understand what the words of a legal text actually say.”
Hmmm. That is crucial, but what most “justices” do now, is ignore the actual text of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
The Father of Jurisprudence, Justice John Marshall, stated that any “law” that is antithetical to the Supreme Law of the Land is “null and void”.
The tricky “lawyers” have jettisoned the Constitution for irrational Positive Law, and now, after 100 years of defying our Natural Rights from God and imposing income taxes and the unconstitutional Federal Reserve to control our economy and make us into slaves for an oligarchy, we are totally detached from the Supreme Law of this Land.
We currently are under Rule of Oligarchy which is a joke. We have 5 SCOTUS members who need to be in prison for Treason-—as we have hundreds in Congress that should also be in prison.
We now have an unequal, irrational Vice System which promotes dysfunction, vice and theft, etc. and punishes Virtue when “Justice” is the Queen of Virtue and a “Just Law” has to promote “public virtue” always.
It is the total ejection of Right Reason and Justice from our legal system—all unconstitutional, but what the hay.
Hopefully, we get a rational judge who can read and understand the meaning of a simple word like “marriage” or “union”, etc. Control of Words is crucial for controlling beliefs.
We have allowed our Language to be twisted and warped and it is becoming meaningless, to destroy Reason and understanding of history and Natural Law for the Mind Control of the children. They will be removed from Reality and Objective Truth (our Constituton) and be fine with Vice being Virtue and Girls being Boys-—they will be reduced to cattle and easily herded and controlled, they will be so incredibly dumb after the brainwashing/conditioning in our skools. It is the NWO design-—to make us into non-thinking cattle.
After all, no argument is ever as convincing as “It says so right here.”
Textualism + Humility could lead to too much stare decisis.
...
Not if a previous decision ignored the text.
Hey Judge, did you KNOW that babies in the womb have a right to life, too?
Congratulations on your Marine!
Welcome to FR, if I haven't said that to you before. :)
Gorsuch attends a church run by a woman who performs gay marriages and who hates Trump. I doubt anti-abortionism is on his radar.
“It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”
It wasn’t his job to fix Congress’ mistakes.
Since he’s against euthanasia odds are he holds the same opinion on the sanctity of life regarding the unborn.
Another Roberts? That’s the optimistic view. I think he might be more like Souter V2.0.
Skeptical based on his background. Seems like he could possibly come down pro-life. Also pro 4A and possibly sympathetic to anti-trust arguments.
Don’t trust him a bit on 2A or sovereignty issues. Resume says straight up establishment stooge. Let’s hope we’re wrong.
“And perhaps most important to Judge Gorsuch, a true native Coloradan, was I doing enough to learn to ski?”
Native Coloradoans, for the most part, do not ski. They hunt and fish. Skiing is what the Calistan imports associate with Colorado.
I don’t trust anybody who lives in (Marxist) Boulder,Co.
This judge might not be Souter, but he might not be Scalia,either.
Ask his views on the Heller, Obergefell, and ACA cases, as well as stare decisis.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.