Neil Gorsuch Quotes
…putting on a robe doesn’t make me any smarter. […] But […] the robe does mean something – and not just that I can hide coffee stains on my shirt. Putting on a robe reminds us that it’s time to lose our egos and open our minds. It serves, too, as a reminder of the modest station we judges are meant to occupy in a democracy. In other countries, judges wear scarlet, silk, and ermine. Here, we judges buy our own plain black robes. And I can report that the standard choir outfit at the local uniform supply store is a pretty good deal. Ours is a judiciary of honest black polyester.
The government of Pakistan regarded this as seditious. The Government can fire judges at will and the military has the right to convene its own courts and try Pakistani civilians for certain alleged crimes by removing their cases from the civilian courts. Even when a Pakistani judge is not intimidated by the government or the military, the Islamic extremist fanatics often assassinate any public official who any one of thousands of fanatics feels is anti-Islamic.
Jefferson, like most Presidents and ex-presidents, had his concerns about the judiciary and judicial checks, especially of the Executive Branch.
He was at the time referring to Greece where the King’s ministers controlled the judges of the nation. He stressed the importance of judicial independence if justice is to be obtained.
This shameful quotation was shocking to most readers. It is subject to two interpretations: One that judges who did not rule on Constitutional issues the way conservative extremists wanted would come to physical harm. The other, that conservatives should pressure judges by withholding appropriations for the courts, impeachments and recall elections where they exist, as well as funding potential opponents for those jurisdictions where judges are elected. Both meanings were disgraceful in the view of most Americans. Later, DeLay was convicted and sentenced to jail for money laundering and illegally spending and raising campaign funds. He was also reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee for unethical methods of fund raising for other earlier actions.
The dramatic thing about this quotation is that in public, the mantra of conservatives about the courts of America is that they make and change laws as opposed to just interpreting and clarifying the laws. They traditionally accuse judges who rule against their favorite positions as using the courts as an instrument of political and social change. Here a leading conservative federal jurist, who thereafter became a member of the Supreme Court, was acknowledging and advocating the courts as instruments for conservative social, economic, and political change.
The concern of extreme wings of various parties with judicial activism is not limited to the United States.
He served on a Supreme Court that was as close to political as any had ever been. Hence his great concern.
Neil McGill Gorsuch is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump on January 31, 2017 and has served since April 10, 2017.
