It is a stunning defeat for judicial conservatives who worked to ensure Gorsuch's nomination and Republicans, including Donald Trump, who stymied President Barack Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, liberal Merrick Garland in 2016. In his second blockbuster opinion of the term, McGirt v. Oklahoma, Gorsuch declared that a vast swath of Oklahoma, including most of Tulsa, is a Creek Indian reservation, at least for the purposes of federal criminal law. But when he does so, he merely inches toward the center, crafting narrow compromises that may lead to future conservative rulings. Anarchy, however, is not Gorsuch’s guiding principle. "You have nine very independent people approaching these cases as best they can," Gorusch said.

"This was not judging, this was legislating -- a brute force attack on our constitutional system," Severino, who also clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, said. Gorsuch came up in a much different milieu. "I promised," the President said, "to select someone who respects our laws" and someone who will "interpret them as written." Gorsuch takes big swings. Or, as his put it succinctly: “An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law,” because “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.” Gorsuch swatted down the dissenters’ argument that the Civil Rights Act could not possibly protect LGBTQ employees because Congress did not contemplate such individuals when it passed the law in 1964. Or, as his put it succinctly: “An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law,” because “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.” Gorsuch swatted down the dissenters’ argument that the Civil Rights Act could not possibly protect LGBTQ employees because Congress did not contemplate such individuals when it passed the law in 1964. As for Gorsuch, back in September he told CNN he rejects talk of "hard right turns" on the bench.

': Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court's right turn, Supreme Court declines to weigh in on legal doctrine that shields law enforcement, oral arguments in the cases concerning Title VII. "When a case is really close, really close, on the textual evidence, I'm with you on textual evidence," he told David Cole, a lawyer representing a transgender plaintiff.

He flings surprisingly personal insults, deriding Gorsuch’s opinions as “arrogant,” “dangerous,” “revolutionary,” “evasive,” “inexcusable,” and “sullied by ad hominem rhetoric” that contributes “to the worst current trends” of “rational and civil discourse.” Alito seems to take personal offense at Gorsuch’s defections to the left, treating them as a betrayal by the chosen one. In the 2019 case United States v. Davis, he joined the liberals to invalidate yet another vague statute, this time penning the majority opinion. ". “In our constitutional order,” Gorsuch declared this time around, “a vague law is no law at all.” His opinion led Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in dissent, to accuse his colleague of driving the court “off the constitutional cliff.”. In truth, he was just exasperating. After taking the bench, Gorsuch wasted no time delivering for conservatives. "It's close.

“Judges,” Gorsuch retorted, “are not free to overlook plain statutory commands on the strength of nothing more than suppositions about intentions or guesswork about expectations.” His logic will ensure that these landmark federal protections extend far beyond employment, to LGBTQ people in housing, health care, education, and more.

But when the law leads him to the left, his unflinching decisions can force the court—and the nation—to live up to its highest ideals. Readers like you make our work possible. He also believed that a judge should start with the text when analyzing a law, and not look to legislative history or statements related to the law's purpose. He dismisses opposing arguments with a flick of the wrist, frequently insinuating that they are too dumb to merit a rejoinder. (The four liberals joined him, while his fellow conservatives dissented.) Scalia touted both theories, too. He was nominated by President Donald Trump on January 31, 2017 and has served since April 10, 2017. In truth, he was just exasperating. But he tempered them with a philosophy of judicial restraint, the notion that unelected judges should generally defer to the democratic branches. To right the ship, judges should strive not for minimalism, but for absolute fidelity to the law, wherever it takes them. The liberal justices, by contrast, welcome Gorsuch into the fold with open arms any time he crosses over. Hear Supreme Court arguments about LGBTQ workers' rights (2019), Trump TV? “Vague laws,” Gorsuch intoned, “invite arbitrary power,” allowing “police and prosecutors” to enforce their own “subjective” sense of what’s forbidden. The junior justice wanted to be exalted. She said the primary reason was that Scalia reshaped the way judges approached statutory interpretation by insisting upon a sharp focus on the words on the page. This approach empowered conservative judges to issue right-wing decisions just as sweeping and disruptive as any of Earl Warren’s. Gorsuch obviously saw himself as the second coming of Justice Antonin Scalia, the legal titan whose seat he filled. His opinions swelled with purple prose … To right the ship, judges should strive not for minimalism, but for absolute fidelity to the law, wherever it takes them. He has swung left on LGBTQ equality, criminal justice, executive power, and tribal rights, confounding Republicans who hoped he’d toe the GOP party line. In one resoundingly liberal opinion, for instance, he suggested that the entire system of supervised release—the federal version of parole—is unconstitutional. He expounds the original meaning of the Constitution with the brash certitude of a man just back from a seance with James Madison. Show full articles without "Continue Reading" button for {0} hours. (Textualism means looking primarily at a statute’s plain text; originalism means looking at the Constitution’s original meaning.) Chief Justice John Roberts may be the court’s swing vote. In one particular case, he sided with the court's liberals in favor of an immigrant, holding that the law used against him was impermissibly vague. Sure, the decision might prompt a “tsunami of litigation.” But that repercussion is outweighed by “the interest we all share in the preservation of our constitutionally promised liberties.” The liberal Justice Elena Kagan dissented. When Neil Gorsuch joined the Supreme Court in 2017, he instantly became the most irritating justice on the court. His votes were not just conservative but aggressively reactionary, reflecting overt disdain for progressive precedent. His opinions have grown less pompous and more pointed, trading aw-shucks smarm for forceful analysis. He picked pointless fights with his colleagues, lecturing them about his superior understanding of the law while flaunting his putative purism. Anarchy is not Gorsuch’s guiding principle. You can cancel anytime. When Trump introduced Gorsuch to the country in January 2017, under the glittering lights of the East Room of the White House, he said he was fulfilling a pledge to "find the very best judge in the country for the Supreme Court.". It is likely that Roberts, the most senior member of the court in the majority, assigned Gorsuch the opinion. In just over three years, Gorsuch has transformed into one of the Supreme Court’s most unpredictable justices.

(CNN)Justice Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump's first nominee to the Supreme Court, delivered an opinion Monday that will change how more than 7 million LGBTQ individuals will live and work in the United States. He dismisses opposing arguments with a flick of the wrist, frequently insinuating that they are too dumb to merit a rejoinder. After forcibly relocating the Creeks to Oklahoma, Congress guaranteed this swath of land to the tribe in perpetuity. His opinions have grown less pompous and more pointed, trading aw-shucks smarm for forceful analysis. In the first of these, Bostock v. Clayton County, Gorsuch found that the Civil Rights Act’s bar on sex discrimination in the workplace protects LGBTQ people. (CNN) Justice Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump's first nominee to the Supreme Court, delivered an opinion Monday that will change how … ", "When you put on the robe, " he continued, "you put that stuff aside and you open your mind, and you listen. In return, they roared their approval. "It sails under a textualist flag, but what it actually represents is a theory of statutory interpretation that Justice Scalia excoriated -- the theory that courts should 'update' old statutes so that they better reflect the current values of society.

They argued that decisions like Roe were wrong not because they intruded upon the democratic process, but because they strayed from the text and original meaning of the Constitution.

Or at least, it’s not the only one.