Neil Gorsuch Quotes

One big reason liberals come across as intolerant of ordinary Americans today is their preference for court decisions and regulatory mandates over democratically debated and approved legislation. This preference for working around the people’s elected representatives feeds all-or-nothing outcomes that are devoid of the accommodations and compromises which almost always feature in any legislative solution. It is these accommodations and compromises, moreover, that help make the outcome acceptable even to the losing side.

Just because a majority of the Supreme Court declares something to be 'constitutional' does not make it so.

I would like to see more judicial activism because I want to see more laws struck down.

The criterion of constitutionality is not whether we believe the law to be for the public good.

The Supreme Court is the living voice of the Constitution—that is, of the will of the people expressed in the fundamental law they have enacted. It is ... the conscience of the people.... It is the guarantee of the minority who, when threatened by the impatient vehemence of the majority, can appeal to this permanent law, finding the interpreter and enforcer thereof in a Court set high above the assaults of faction.

You can't write laws in America if you don't compromise.

In the United States almost every political question becomes a legal question—or at least a question with legal dimensions.

Conservative Supreme Court Justices have overturned many more decisions arrived at by legislative majorities then have liberal justices.

A decision reflects judicial restraint if it upholds practices under constitutional attack. A decision reflects judicial activism if it invalidates practices under constitutional attack.

… courts today are less inclined to allow majoritarian coercion of unpopular or disliked minority groups, especially when blatant racism . . . religious prejudice, or some other constitutionally suspect motivation, can be discovered behind such legislation

The primary job of the Supreme Court justice is not to uphold the will of the majority of the moment. The primary job of the Supreme Court is not to reflect the popular opinions of the day.... The Constitution is a decidedly anti-majoritarian document in wonderful and important ways that intentionally protect our rights and our liberties. And the role of the Supreme Court—in protecting those rights and liberties—is sometimes precisely to frustrate the will of a majority.

Courts do not make the law.

Judges should always behave judicially by adjudicating, never politically by legislating. I leave policy to policymakers. They're preeminent, but they're not omnipotent. In other words, lawmakers decide if laws pass, but judges decide if laws pass muster.

A Supreme Court justice must convince at least four colleagues to bind the federal government nationwide, whereas a district court judge issuing a nationwide injunction needn't convince anyone.

There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.

The court makes an amazing amount of decisions that ought to be made by the people.

The Supreme Court is not elected, and it is therefore not a proper arbiter of social policy.

I also believe that the Supreme Court should be the final arbiter of all federal questions.

Judges wear legal professionalism and precedent as a mantel that secures legitimacy for their decisions. It's how they distinguish themselves from politicians or administrative agencies, while wielding power that is sometimes much greater than those democratically accountable actors.

Most high courts in other nations do not have discretion, such as we enjoy, in selecting the cases that the high court reviews. Our court is virtually alone in the amount of discretion it has.

The best is the enemy of the good.

We are on the precipice of a crisis, a Constitutional crisis. The checks and balances, which have been at the core of this Republic, are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances that say if you get 51% of the vote, you don't get your way 100% of the time. It is amazing, it's almost a temper tantrum.

Judge Roberts has assured me personally that he has a healthy respect for precedent and the hard-won rights of Americans.

What five members of the Supreme Court say the law is may be something vastly different from what Congress intended the law to be.

What I don't like is judges legislating from the bench. And as president of the United States, I will appoint justices who uphold the Constitution and who don't see themselves as a super legislature.