What’s your take, Auh?
While this is politically “bad” this doesn’t seem to be an ideological slip up by Gorsuch.
He says in a concurring option that the law is vague as to what a “violent” crime is. He says
“no one should be surprised that the Constitution looks unkindly on any law so vague that reasonable people cannot understand its terms and judges do not know where to begin in applying it.”’
Is he right or full of it? Should he have voted “the right way” politically despite misgivings about the law?
In anycase I don’t imagine this is an Obamacare-level “betrayal”.
I actually agree with Gorsuch on this one. “Crime of violence” certainly is a vague term, and it’s pretty weak tea to trigger a deportation of an otherwise legal alien. Had the guy been convicted of a clearly violent crime such as murder, I would have been tempted to look the other way and rule that, while the term “crime of violence” is vague, it unambiguously applied to the crime committed and thus the convict was properly warned of the repercussions of his actions. But burglary is not necessarily a violent crime (one may commit a burglary by picking a lock of an unoccupied house or vehicle without even breaking anything), so ICE basing its deportation on that law would be quite arbitrary. I agree with Gorsuch that Congress should amend the law to state unambiguously what crimes would subject an otherwise legal alien to deportation, and I would add that, in addition to mentioning “burglary” by name, attempting to vote or attempting to register to vote in violation of state or federal law should be from and center in the list of crimes that get an otherwise legal alien deported.
I don't see this particular decision as being an Obamacare-level betrayal either. Take by itself, its actually a pretty minor legal decision.
Rather, I see it in the first in a long line of decisions where Gorsuch will turn out to be a Sandra Day O'Connor type "swing vote" on the court that will give the Dem bloc on a court a 5-4 victory on social issues.
If you judged on O'Connor solely by her first year or two on the court, you'd conclude that Reagan made a great conservative pick. She voted with Rehnquist 90% of the time her first year on the court, more than any other judge on the court at that time. None of those decisions were particularly important legal matters, but she certainly proved to be more ideologically Republican than Democrat.
After a few years, she began voting with the Dems on a handful of minor cases, being the deciding vote on a number of 5-4 decisions. Then the dam broke in the late 80s/early 90s when some MAJOR precedents had to be decided, and O'Connor remained the 5th vote to deliver a leftist victory on numerous "landmark" decisions on social issues, though she remained overall "conservative" on her track record on the court.
I don't recall any 5-4 decisions where Scalia was the LONE GOP appointee to join the Ruth Bader Ginsburg bloc of the court. Hpwever, I do remember numerous times where that was an Anthony Kennedy/Sandra Day O'Connor type move.
For what its worth, the current SCOTUS justice who really IS a "Scalia type nominee" (namely, Justice Alito, who was nicknamed "Scalito" when he was a lower court nominee) stood with the conservative justices and AGAINST Gorsuch and the Democrat judges on this one.