Posted on 09/07/2019 2:08:06 PM PDT by karpov
Justice Neil Gorsuch has two rules for his law clerks. “Rule No. 1: Don’t make stuff up,” he tells them. “Rule No. 2: When people beg, and say, ‘Oh, the consequences are so important,’ and when they say, ‘You’re a terrible, terrible, terrible person if you don’t,’ just refer back to Rule No. 1. And we’ll be fine.”
He is sitting in a wood-and-leather chair in his Supreme Court chambers. He’s discussing originalism, the idea that the Constitution’s meaning is the same in 2019 as in 1788. “Our Founders deliberately chose a written constitution,” he says. “Its writtenness was important to them. They rejected the English tradition of an unwritten constitution, because they wanted to fix certain things.”
To treat the Constitution as a “living” document, he says, is to regard it “more or less as a relic,” something kept “in the back of the church behind a screen, and you look at it as you walk by, and you move on.” But that’s “not what ‘We the People’ agreed to,” he adds. “We didn’t say five judges—or nine, or whatever—sitting in Washington get to govern 330 million people. Who would write such a thing down? Who would agree to that? That’s not a republic. I don’t know what that is, but it’s not a republic. Not a democracy.”
In his new book, “A Republic, if You Can Keep It”—a mix of speeches, reflections and excerpts from his judicial opinions, to be published Sept. 10—Justice Gorsuch makes the case, he says, that “we should all be originalists.” Consider the alternative: “What happens when judges make it up?” he asks. “Strange things happen. You start losing rights, first of all, that are in the Constitution.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
I like this guy. Had Antonin Scalia on my bucket list to meet, might add this guy given time.
Well; sounds outstanding, now if he can just stick to it!
I think I’ll get that book. Should be an interesting read.
You mean like the right to life....via abortion. However did the courts interpret the right to kill an innocent as a right.
Similar circumstances for homo marriage to be approved. Public opinion had shifted on the issue. Roberts was trying not to politicize the court.
Saw it also with bammycare. No way the court was going to deny the first half black prez his signature legislation.
Maybe Mr Gorsuch can have coffee with CJ Roberts.
But progressives don’t like it.
Time will tell. We’ve had some people impersonating conservatives in the recent past. (Roberts and perhaps Kavanaugh) Don’t let Kavanaugh’s nasty confirmation process fool you into thing he’s a real conservative.
Good prompt to put some John Denver on the turntable.
We will see if he means what he says when he rules on Second Amendment cases. The original meaning was and is clear, and it was intended to make sure that a final veto over a rogue, power-hungry government was in the hands of the people. Further, the Article 1, Section 8 power of Congress to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal (to authorize civilians to engage in combat with enemy forces, including ships) would be utterly meaningless if we didn’t have a pretty unrestricted RKBA. As such, if Gorsuch is being honest, he would vote to overturn the 1934 NFA, 1968 GCA, and every other federal and state/local law that infringed in any way upon our RKBA. I am not holding my breath waiting for him to do anything of the sort...though I hope and pray that I am wrong
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