Forever in debt to your priceless advice

Neil Gorsuch says that proponents of judicial reform should be careful what they wish for:

Justice Neil Gorsuch is pushing back against President Joe Biden’s recent proposals to restructure the Supreme Court.

“I just say: Be careful,” Gorsuch warned in an interview that aired on “Fox News Sunday.”

Less than a week after Biden announced he was reversing course and supporting 18-year term limits for justices and legislation to create a binding ethics code for the high court, the first of President Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court appointees encouraged Americans to think long and hard before taking steps that might undermine the independence of the judicial system.

“The independent judiciary … What does it mean to you as an American?” Gorsuch asked about Biden’s new plan during an interview linked to a new book Gorsuch is releasing this week. “It means that when you’re unpopular, you can get a fair hearing.”

“If you’re in the majority, you don’t need judges and juries, to hear you, to protect your rights, if you’re popular,” Gorsuch continued. “It’s there for the moments when the spotlight’s on you — when the government’s coming after you. And don’t you want a ferociously independent judge and a jury of your peers to make those decisions?”–

Gorsuch did not comment directly on the specifics of Biden’s plan and was not asked during the aired portion of the interview about some of the events that the president cited as triggering his about-face on structural changes to the high court. They include the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning the federal constitutional right to abortion, the ruling last month granting presidents some degree of immunity from prosecution for official acts and the ethics controversies that have enveloped Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

The first problem with the argument is that term limits — the most common way of doing things among liberal democracies — unless you think that the term means that countries should be effectively governed by majorities of decades ago. An enforceable ethics code limits a kind of “judicial independence” that is plainly undesirable. And a constitutional amendment overruling the 21st century Dred Scott would not undermine judicial independence at all unless you think that the Supreme Court is the author and not just the interpreter of the Constitution, and indeed Trump v. US suggests exactly this.

But that aside, LOL at the idea that we’re at risk of losing a Court that stands up for disempowered minorities. It’s true that the the Roberts Court does give a more-than-fair-hearing to “minorities.” The problem is that these minorities — politicians who want to commit crimes with impunity, police officers who want to commit crimes with impunity, politicians who do not think that citizens who prefer the other political party and/or people of color should have the right to vote, politicians who think that 11-year-olds should have to carry their rapist’s baby to term, companies that want to dump toxic pollutants and climate change accelerants into the environment, billionaires who want the unlimited ability to influence the political system, etc. etc. etc. — are already massively overrepresented in our political system. So personally, I’m willing to take that chance.