Neil Gorsuch (1967- ), a US judge, has been named by President Trump to sit on the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court. He must be confirmed by the Senate, which is holding hearings and will likely vote next month.
Since 2006, Gorsuch has sat on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Denver, Colorado. It covers the western states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma and is one step below the Supreme Court.
In 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia died, opening up a seat on the Supreme Court. President Obama named Merrick Garland to take his place. Republicans controlled the Senate and would not give Garland a hearing or a vote, hoping a Republican would soon become president and name a judge more to their liking. And so it was.
Gorsuch is pretty much the same as Scalia or Clarence Thomas, so it would not change the court much. Like Scalia, Gorsuch is a texutalist: he believes in the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law. Also like Scalia, he is an inconsistent originalist, reading the constitution according to its original meaning when it suits him. As a rich White man he should be good at that.
Gorsuch favours business in most cases over workers, customers and government agencies. He does not like to second-guess the police, even when they use excessive force. He is strong on religious liberty, even for Muslims, but narrowly interprets civil rights laws. He did not distance himself from Scalia’s remark that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a “racial entitlement”.
Alphonse Maddin.
Empathy: In one of his most infamous rulings, he sided with a trucking company that fired Alphonse Maddin for disobeying orders when he feared freezing to death. Of the seven judges who heard the case, Gorsuch was the only one who sided with the company. He said he had “empathy” for Maddin – and yet it did not cross his mind to put himself in Maddin’s shoes when making the ruling.
Humanization: Small wonder Senate Republicans have been trying to humanize him during the hearings. At one point Gorsuch noted:
“the family that skis together stays together”
Most families do not have the money to ski together.
(Image: YouTube)
Dark money: Gorsuch seems unconcerned that millions of dollars in “dark money” (money given in secret) are paying for ads pushing the Senate to vote for him. The ads are running in states that Trump won where Democratic senators face re-election in 2018. Gorsuch says forcing the money men to say who they are would “chill” “free speech”.
The NAACP, after reviewing his rulings, opposes his nomination:
“Rather than protect equal rights as enshrined in our Constitution and civil rights laws, Judge Gorsuch’s jurisprudence presents a troubling consistency in key areas of significance to civil rights claimants which, in our view, will adversely affect the ability of racial minorities and others to fully vindicate their rights under our nation’s antidiscrimination laws.”
– Abagond, 2017.
Sources: mainly C-SPAN (the Senate hearings), Democracy Now, NAACP, Mother Jones.
See also:
- NAACP: Civil Rights Record of Neil Gorsuch
- Antonin Scalia
- Voting Rights Act of 1965
- The Trump Era
- Mary Elizabeth Taylor – the Black woman sitting behind him in the top picture.
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The concept of “texualism” or “originalism” meets its first of dozens of fallacies when one asks: “Does the Constitution dictate that only a man may serve as POTUS?” Article Two, when describing the office, uses only the male pronoun (“he”). But of course it does not literally mean that. Jurists who describe themselves as “textualists” or “originalists”, like Scalia and Gorsuch, apply this doctrine when it conveniently suits them. Scalia always voted Catholic on any issue that intersected with something about which the Catholic church has a position. Gorsuch, who comes from a wingnut evangelical family in Colorado, will be Scalia on steroids in that department. Worse, actually, because Scalia was brilliant but an asshole, which limited the impact of his brilliance. Gorsuch is brilliant and he’s smoove, and crazy and xenophobic and theocratic. Welcome to the next 20 years on the SCOTUS.
I will say, though, that listening to the Senators bump and scrape through their clumsy “questioning” is an exercise in frustration. Most Senators could not “question” their way out of a wet paper bag. Generally they grandstand and bully pulpit for a few minutes, huffing and puffing their hot air, and then conclude their bluster with a question tone. Gorsuch has no actual question to answer, so he says whatever he wants. Time wasted. Amy Klobuchar was probably the sole exception, at least that I’ve heard. Her point was that Gorsuch tends to be expansive and activist when writing opinions that relate in some way to his theocratic convictions, which of course he dodged and sidestepped and parried. It makes no difference in any event because the math has always dictated that he would be confirmed.
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@Blanc2
Good points. I saw the confirmation hearings as political theater where the Dems pretended to ask probing questions and Gorsuch pretended to answer them.
His confirmation is a forgone conclusion. The Dems who vote him in should be primaried out over the next few years.
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I wonder if his ruling would have been different, if Alphonse Maddin were white? Not racist mongering, just wondering. It probably wouldn’t have, since he is so pro management and against labor. While he looks harmless, and even didn’t want to shake Trump’s hand, after reading information about him, this isn’t the man that I want on my Supreme Court. There should be a limit of 6 months where the Senate has to take a vote on a Supreme Court nominee. If there was, this wouldn’t even be a subject, and Mitch Garland would already be on the court.
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He did not distance himself from Scalia’s remark that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a “racial entitlement”. – Abagond
Personally, I’m not interested in Amerika’s political affairs, never have been and never will be. Therefore, it is no surprise to me that this country’s Senate will eventually place a loose cannon on the highest court in the land. However, I’d like to turn my attention away from the Senators and towards a term that somewhat stirred my emotions: “racial entitlement.”
Amerika has set aside more than a few programs that pertained to white people ONLY. Therefore, politicians and the almost lily white bastion of the judicial system should quit their palavering regarding the non-existence of the so-called “racial entitlements”, for Black people mostly and/or minorities in general.
The 1830 Indian Removal Act, for example, forcibly relocated Cherokee, Creeks and other eastern Indians to west of the Mississippi River to make room for white settlers.
The 1862 Homestead Act followed suit, giving away millions of acres – for free – of what had been Indian Territory west of the Mississippi. Ultimately, 270 million acres, or 10% of the total land area of the United States, was converted to private hands, overwhelmingly white, under Homestead Act provisions.
The 1790 Naturalization Act permitted only “free white persons” to become naturalized citizens, thus opening the doors to European immigrants but not others.
In this century, Alien Land Laws passed in California and other states, reserved farm land for white growers by preventing Asian immigrants, ineligible to become citizens, from owning or leasing land.
Racial barriers to naturalized U.S. citizenship weren’t removed until the McCarran-Walter Act in 1952, and white racial preferences in immigration remained until 1965.
In the South, the federal government never followed through on General Sherman’s Civil War plan to divide up plantations and give each freed slave “40 acres and a mule” as reparations.
When slavery ended, its legacy lived on not only in the impoverished condition of Black people but in the wealth and prosperity that accrued to white slave owners and their descendents.
Economists who try to place a dollar value on how much white Americans have profited from 200 years of unpaid slave labor, including interest, begin their estimates at $1 trillion.
But rather than recognize how “racial preferences” have tilted the playing field and given us a head start in life, many whites continue to believe that race does not affect our lives.
http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-02.htm
This country was built upon a heap of lies and intentional mislabeling of groups of people from since its inception. These mislabeling and untruths are sometimes deadly. For example: All Blacks are criminals. In turn, police officers place themselves in a heightened, dual sense of defense and offense when approaching Black people due to the label that has already been attached to them/us via tell-lie-vision, sponsored by corporate media. These intentional mislabels are usually what give whites in general and especially those in authoritative positions such as law enforcement, to act in accordance with broadcasted lies and subsequently shoot first and ask question later without fear of repercussions.
The same thing took place regarding Native Americans. They were deemed “savages” by whites. In turn, the impetus to first forced march them damn near the entire country away from the eastern seaboard and massacre these almost defenseless people as being “savages”, was committed by whites as easily as if taking a walk in the park and not think much about their collective, demonic action. This was certainly a lack of empathy and sympathy on the part of white land grabbers.
The same thing applies to Scalia and Gorsuch’s so-called “racial entitlements”, mislabeling comment. Although this term isn’t as deadly as the previous two labels, however, it’s still quite effective.
Eventually, across all spectrums, social, labor, financial, judicial and political, this term will be the vanguard when referring to minorities as their reasoning or crutch to further discriminate, overturn or gut out other existing sociopolitical programs as well as it metastasize its way through the political sphere.
Therefore, be on the lookout folks, as the faux “racial entitlement” term meanders its way to a town hall meeting near you.
Good luck to those who still have an abundance faith in the Amerikan political system!
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I don’t really understand the difference between the various interpretation schools in the US, but the originalist approach seems more democratic to me than the “living constitution”.
Another point: I always thought that the Supreme Court Justices are too powerful in the US. We have the same problem in Germany, but at least we have a seperation between Constituional Court and the highest court of appeals. Also sixteen constituional judges in two chambers who only serve for 12 years and only up to the age of 68. That of course doens’t lmit the courts power, just the individual judge’s.
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@Kartoffel
Term and age limits on judges sounds like a good idea. Lifetime appointments have proven counterproductive in the USA.
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Having a so-called “conservative” or strict constructionist court is important to the long term structural well-being of Blacks in this country. Fashions and fancies change with the flakey sociopolitical winds. A conservative court is stake-in-the-ground protection against the tyranny and mis-treatment associated with becoming the red headed step sister who falls out of favor.
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@ Yogibreeze
You need to lay off the Kool Aid. Strict constructionist is nothing more than a marketing term for capitalist pig. If there was any truth to its advertising, you would see conservative judges, even Clarence Thomas, gasp, sticking up for the constitutional rights of Black people.
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