Neil Gorsuch Is Not Another Scalia. He's the Next John Roberts.Gorsuch puts a handsome face on an ug
Neil Gorsuch Is Not Another Scalia. Hes the Next John Roberts.
Gorsuch puts a handsome face on an ugly ideology.
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Supreme Court Justice nominee Neil Gorsuch testifies on the second day of his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation on March 21, 2017. (Photo: AP / Tom Williams)
When John Roberts was nominated as chief justice of the Supreme Court in 2005, Senator Ted Kennedy asked him: You do agree, dont you, Judge Roberts, that the right to vote is a fundamental constitutional right? It is preservative, I think, of all the other rights, Roberts responded. Without access to the ballot box, people are not in a position to protect any other rights that are important to them.Im just trying to find out on the Voting Rights Act whether you have any problem at all, and trouble at all, in terms of the constitutionality of the existing Voting Rights Act that was extended by the Congress? Kennedy asked. He noted that Roberts had been a leading opponent of the law during the Reagan Administration.
The existing Voting Rights Act, the constitutionality has been upheld, and I dont have any issue with that, Roberts answered.
Roberts famously told the Senate: I come before the committee with no agenda. I have no platform. He described his judicial philosophy with this analogy: Judges are like umpires. Umpires dont make the rules, they apply them. Yet eight years later, Roberts authored the majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder gutting the Voting Rights Act. Hes aggressively pushed the Court to the right rather than calling balls and strikes, writing or joining reactionary opinions on issues like outlawing school integration, blocking Medicaid expansion for millions of Americans and allowing unlimited, secret corporate spending on political campaigns.
Neil Gorsuch has been compared (including by me) to Antonin Scalia, whom he called a lion of the law, but after two days of hearings its clear hes closer to John Robertsanother handsome face with an ugly ideology. When asked about his legal philosophy, Gorsuch invoked the mantra of Justice Byron White, saying, I decide cases. He refused to weigh in when asked about controversial cases like Citizens United, saying I cant get into politics. His personal views, he frequently maintained, were irrelevant to his rulings as a judge.
Yet we know enough about Gorsuch to surmise that he was nominated by Donald Trump to be a smooth-talking advocate on the bench for a far-right ideology. He was hand-picked by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. He has close ties to a conservative billionaire and has praised one of the GOPs most notorious voter-suppression advocates. Hes criticized liberals for challenging gay marriage bans in the courts. During the Bush administration, he praised the Guantánamo prison and defended harsh anti-terror policies. As a judge, he joined the Hobby Lobby decision restricting a womans right to choose and ruled against a truck driver who abandoned his trailer in subzero temperatures after it broke down. Hes consistently favored corporate power and corporate influence in the political process. In fact, a review of his opinions suggests he will be more conservative than Roberts and Alito, second only to Justice Thomas.
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http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/03/22/neil-gorsuch-not-another-scalia-hes-next-john-roberts