A Supremely Qualified Candidate for the Nation’s Highest Court
By Sen. John Thune
After Judge Neil Gorsuch’s recent confirmation hearing, there isn’t a doubt in my mind that he is the right person to replace the late Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court. His resume is impeccable. He graduated from Harvard Law School and Oxford University. He clerked for two Supreme Court justices, including Anthony Kennedy who still serves on the Supreme Court today. He worked in private practice and at the Justice Department. And for the last decade, he’s served on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals where he’s been widely regarded as a brilliant and thoughtful jurist.
While Judge Gorsuch’s experience makes him exceedingly qualified to serve on the Supreme Court, I’m particularly encouraged by the fact that he understands his role as a judge. While he might personally dislike certain laws written by Congress and signed by the president, he knows that it’s his job to interpret the law. He’s a judge, not a legislator. He truly believes that it’s his responsibility to call balls and strikes, not rewrite the rules of the game. It’s that kind of judicial philosophy that benefits the American people, and I think it’s the kind of judge most Americans want on the bench.
It’s because of his experience and judicial philosophy that Judge Gorsuch is supported by people from both ends of the political spectrum. For example, Neal Katyal, acting solicitor general for President Obama, said, “I have no doubt that if confirmed, Judge Gorsuch would help to restore confidence in the rule of law. His years on the bench reveal a commitment to judicial independence — a record that should give the American people confidence that he will not compromise principle to favor the president who appointed him.”
Despite all of his experience and respect among his peers, nothing will be good enough for a vast majority of Senate Democrats who seem increasingly determined to stand in the way of his nomination only because he’s been nominated by a Republican president. Without anything substantial to point to, they are coming up with some pretty creative reasons why they won’t support his nomination. Everything from not agreeing with certain rulings (who agrees with a judge’s every ruling?) to asserting that he’s out of the judicial mainstream, which is just laughable.
If Judge Gorsuch is out of the mainstream, why did both of his home-state senators – one a Republican and one a Democrat – support his nomination when he was appointed to the 10th Circuit? Why did the current minority leader, a Democrat, raise no objection to the nomination? And why did then-Sens. Obama, Biden, or Clinton not raise these concerns when Judge Gorsuch sailed through the Senate with unanimous support?
In the ten-plus years since he was confirmed by the Senate, it isn’t Judge Gorsuch who has changed. It’s Senate Democrats who have changed, and it’s purely because they just can’t get over the 2016 election.
I truly hope my Democrat colleagues don’t upend America’s 230-year Supreme Court tradition by denying a nominee a simple majority vote out of bitterness from having lost one election. If Democrats successfully wage the first partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee in American history, they will be setting a dangerous precedent based on shortsighted and misplaced anger. The Senate is better than that. I hope my colleagues abandon this approach and confirm Judge Gorsuch, because there is every reason to support him.
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“I truly hope my Democrat colleagues don’t upend America’s 230-year Supreme Court tradition by denying a nominee a simple majority vote out of bitterness from having lost one election.”
How come this standard did not apply to Garland? Garland never got a hearing nor a vote….
“If Judge Gorsuch is out of the mainstream, why did both of his home-state senators – one a Republican and one a Democrat – support his nomination when he was appointed to the 10th Circuit? Why did the current minority leader, a Democrat, raise no objection to the nomination? And why did then-Sens. Obama, Biden, or Clinton not raise these concerns when Judge Gorsuch sailed through the Senate with unanimous support?”
Well, let’s see, maybe because in time and place that nomination was put forward by a president who had just won the electoral college and the popular vote, and that president was also not under criminal investigation at the time by the FBI for working with a foreign country (Russia) to meddle in an American election….
What I would like to know is why Senator Thune never helped to apply his 2004 promise, that he made back then, to the Garland nomination in 2016?
Check this out…… FF 02:26
Listen to senile Biden and other Democrats about appointing a Supreme Court judge in an election year, and maybe you will see how hypocritical your heroes on the far left are.
I see that now a 3rd Democrat has said he will vote YES on Gorsuch! Democrats may regret forcing the GOP to go Nuke
They would be wise to save the fight for the next SC appointment.
Give Gorsuch the opportunity and confirm him. Next time it might be Kennedy or Ginsberg and a terrible nominee.
I just think that since it’s Scalia’s replacement they should have voted on qualifications alone and not politics.
If they force the GOP to go nuclear then Trump can pick anyone he wants for the next person. I’m opposed to the GOP going nuclear. It’s just a bad idea. If anything the GOP should come out with a law that says supreme court requires 60 votes to be appointed. That way we may just get rid of the SC court in a couple of decades.
I’d also like to see the SC go away from simple majority decisions and make the court an even number so that whichever way the victory goes it is by at least two.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/us/politics/joe-biden-argued-for-delaying-supreme-court-picks-in-1992.html
“… in a speech on the Senate floor in June 1992, Mr. Biden, then the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said there should be a different standard for a Supreme Court vacancy ‘that would occur in the full throes of an election year.’ The president should follow the example of ‘a majority of his predecessors’ and delay naming a replacement, Mr. Biden said. If he goes forward before then, the Senate should wait to consider the nomination.
“’Some will criticize such a decision and say that it was nothing more than an attempt to save a seat on the court in hopes that a Democrat will be permitted to fill it, but that would not be our intention,’ Mr. Biden said at the time. ‘It would be our pragmatic conclusion that once the political season is underway, and it is, action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over.
“That is what is fair to the nominee and essential to the process. Otherwise, it seems to me,’ he added, ‘we will be in deep trouble as an institution.’”
Tell this all to Emoluments Clause.
I think if the Demos continue to act like children then the Republican should use the nuclear option to put a believer in the Constitution on the Court, unlike those Obummer put on during his pathetic tenure in the White House.
If the Demos want to complain that this was a stolen election due to some Russian meddling, then why didn’t they care that Obummer stole the election by his collusion with Susan Rice and the main stream media regarding the lies about Benghazi prior to the 2012 election; there was also the activities of the IRS to block granting of 501 status to conservative groups during that election cycle which was a blatant misuse of the IRS.
What’s up, of course this piece of writing is in fact pleasant and I have learned lot of things from it concerning blogging.
thanks.