The Senate Judiciary hearings on Judge Neil Gorsuch have been a reminder of why so many Americans were terrified that Hillary Clinton might put two, three, or even four justices on the Supreme Court.
Judge Gorsuch sees the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, as a stable and reliable document, changing only by the amendment process set forth in Article V. In this view, we can forever count on the protection of the Constitution against presidents and congresses that try to infringe on our rights.
Gorsuch made clear that, as a Supreme Court justice, his job would be to remain faithful to the Constitution. He would not pick a winner based on his own preferences and prejudices, then twist the Constitution to reach a pre-determined result.
His liberal Democratic questioners, in contrast, see the Constitution as something unstable, unpredictable, to be changed at the whim of unelected judges following the latest elite trends. Well established rights, clearly written into the Constitution, can disappear while brand-new “rights”, absent from the text, are suddenly discovered.
None of us will have any problem naming rights which would be threatened by the liberal point of view. Instead of religious liberty, Christian conduct would become criminalized and worship pushed into hiding. Instead of free speech, government would decide what you could say and how much you could say it. “Hate speech” would mean anything liberals don’t want to hear, anything that challenges their dogma.
Forget the right to keep and bear arms. Liberals fear an armed, patriotic citizenry, willing and able to defend the Constitution. The only time their judges oppose gun control is when they strike down “stop and frisk” and other laws intended to take illegal guns away from criminals.
The separation of powers and federalism will be totally elastic if liberals control the Supreme Court, changing as necessary to empower liberal officeholders while confining conservatives.
Another point which has emerged from the hearings is the question of whether Federal judges should give bureaucrats nearly a blank check to interpret the law in any way they choose when issuing regulations. Gorsuch, like Chief Justice John Roberts, has suggested that the courts may need to take a closer look at whether the regulations represent the policy preferences of the regulators instead of Congress. The Obama administration was notorious for stretching the legislative wording to accomplish its goals, and the courts had a very imperfect record against this tactic. Remember when the Supreme Court saved ObamaCare subsidies by saying that the word “state” did not really mean “state”, but could also mean the Federal government?
The nomination of Gorsuch was fulfillment of the campaign promise by President Trump. Gorsuch will be a worthy successor to the late Antonin Scalia, and the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have not been able to come up with any reason to stop him.
