Supreme Court justices rarely sit for news interviews....unless it’s to promote a book. Such was the case on Monday’s CBS Mornings with Justice Neil Gorsuch set to release one on Tuesday about how overregulation has harmed ordinary Americans.
Naturally, Gorusch was hit with the usual smears that come with being a conservative jurist, such as being too grounded in “ideology” as opposed to being “fair and impartial,” the reason why Americans of differing views hate each other, and refusing to rule so as to confer with “public perception” to avoid “real-world ramifications” (e.g. on abortion and affirmative action).
Co-host Gayle King even started the labeling before going to chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett’s interview: “Gorsuch was the first of three justices nominated by President Donald Trump that have established a solid conservative majority on the Court. Now, that conservative majority has ushered in monumental decisions on issues like abortion rights and presidential immunity.”
Garrett started with the book and how Gorsuch “throws the book at the law.” The justice explained the book came about as he’s witnessed for nearly two decades how “ordinary Americans — decent, hard-working Americans” have been “caught up in the legal system”.
He explained not only have “[f]ederal crimes have maybe doubled in our lifetime” and there are “more people serving life sentences today than we had serving any sentence in 1970 or thereabouts,” but “it would take years just to read” aloud the number of possible federal crimes.
The justice argued this could have to do with the lack of “trust” between Americans, adding he’s “worr[ied]” that “more and more Americans think that people in the other political party are not just wrong — fine — but are evil. I worry when we are unable to speak to one another and listen to one another.”
Instead of agreeing, Garrett implied right-leaning individuals are to blame: “But in a recent poll, 70 percent say Gorsuch and the other current justices contribute to that problem, deciding cases on ideology rather than being fair and impartial. On that, Gorsuch dissents respectfully.”
Gorsuch pointed out a reality that goes far too often unacknowledged that he agreed in the last term with the liberal justices “something like 45 percent of the time.”
Garrett hit back by invoking abortion:
But there are people who watch this right now and say I thought I understood what Roe v. Wade meant in our country. I thought I understand what affirmative action in college admission meant, and this court told me I didn’t understand what that meant and I wrongly relied on things that I thought were settled. What would you say to those?
Gorsuch went back and forth with Garrett on both abortion and affirmative action, showing conservatives how to calmly demolish claims of the conservative thought being a scourge on America (click “expand”):
GORSUCH: I would say those are deeply complex legal questions on which reasonable minds can, of course, and do disagree. And that when it comes to Roe v. Wade, for example, what did the court decide? Decided that we the people should answer that question, not nine people sitting in Washington, D.C.
GARRETT: How about affirmative action?
GORSUCH: Much the same thing. What did we decide? We decided that all people are created equal, that it’s not acceptable in this country to discriminate on the basis of race.
GARRETT: And, for those who would say but I feel something’s been ripped away from me, you would say?
GORSUCH: I would say that we’re taking it back to you. In a democracy, you’re in the driver’s seat. You’re the sovereign. Those famous three first words of the Constitution empower you. Do you really want me deciding everything for you?
GARRETT: And for a woman in a state where she no longer has the rights she once relied on, is that cold comfort?
GORSUCH: Major, all I can say is I don’t know better than you do on these questions. And that most major western democracies have decided these questions through the ballot box.
As part of a brief aside on the left’s push to implement control of the court under the guise of an ethics code “in response in part to pricey travel paid for by Republican donors” (but nothing liberal justices have done), Garrett asked if Gorsuch and his colleagues to act more “to understand and care about its public perception.”
Gorsuch gave a fascinating answer:
You raise a really interesting question about the place that unelected judges have in a democracy. An independent judiciary, our founders fought a revolution for it because they knew what it was like to have a judiciary that was responsive to the crown, to a whimsical king. They didn’t want that for this country. And the truth is, when you’re the man on the dock, you don’t want it either.
A few minutes later and back live, Garrett huffed to the co-hosts that the justice didn’t “appear at all troubled by the decline in public confidence in the Supreme Court or the real-world ramifications of overturning decades of legal precedent.”
Signaling his support for the packing the court crowd, Garrett huffed that such “[c]omfort with such contradictions, of course, is one of the things that comes with a lifetime”.
“Yeah, many people are questioning whether it should be a lifetime appointment,” King replied.
Featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers flashed his progressive stripes (and given he’s married to a lead producer for far-left, Clarence Thomas-hating HBO host, John Oliver) (click “expand”):
DUTHIERS: Yeah, Major, I appreciate you pushing back on those issues because I thought it was sort of telling that the associate justice said, do you want me deciding everything for you? If you’re a woman, you will say — but you have decided. Even though you’re suggesting that you’re sending it back to the people, the Court made those decisions that had been precedents for over 50 years, Major.
GARRETT: And what was once relied upon can no longer be. That’s the change.
DUTHIERS: That’s right.
DUNCAN: Mmmmm.
DUTHIERS: All right —
DUNCAN: Prescient.
DUTHIERS: — Major Garrett for us.
DUNCAN: Great interview.
To see the relevant CBS transcript from August 5, click here.
