Neil Gorsuch Quotes

The self-defining nature of intended actions can be illustrated by the case, developed earlier in this chapter, of the drivers who hit the child in the street. In one instance, we considered the driver who comes upon a child darting into the street. The driver hits and kills the child by accident. In doing so, the driver indubitably effects an awful result- the consequences he brings about are terrible and, as a result, we may censure and punish the driver. But we may very well treat him differently from another driver who intentionally hunts down the child with her car. For this latter driver, we may say that no punishment is harsh enough. What undergirds the difference in our reaction to the two drivers? It is the difference in their self-definition, volition, choice. The hunting driver expresses herself to the world through her actions, defines who she is and what she believes, in a very different way than the accidental driver. Thus, what really illuminates the darting child hypothetical and ones like it are not arguments over causation but an assessment of human intentions.

Our system of separated powers and checks-and-balances threatens to give way to the continual and permanent accretion of power in the hands of one man. That is no recipe for a republic.

The morally defining nature of intentions can be further illustrated by any number of choices we make in daily living. Most of us might be said, for example, to "allow" the poor in our cities and towns to go hungry because we fail to do enough to help them- spending our time and our money in other pursuits, such as family and friends. We may even fully forsee or know that our failure to do more for the poor will mean that some persons will go hungry. While our choices in such cases indubitably say something about who we are, they do not say the same thing about us as would plotting intentionally to starve others. To seek out to starve another person is to endorse that objective, intelligently choose it, and freely will it. By contrast, the occurrence or nonoccurrence of unintended side effects, even ones we foresee as absolutely inevitable (as with the hungry person left unfed), necessarily say less about our success or failure in effecting our free will and intelligence in the free world.
imply put, we live as human beings in a world where we must make choices and take actions that, even when entirely legitimate and good, necessarily harm or damage or impinge upon other goods. And this happens at both the individual and the societal level. In choosing to spend a weekend with family, it may unavoidably mean that some persons in the soup kitchen will go hungry. In choosing to spend additional money on a prescription drug care program that primarily benefits the elderly, we as a society may know with crystalline clarity that we will not be able to increase spending on education for the young. With so many varied and diverse goods to pursue in this life, we cannot help but make choices in pursuit of legitimate and upright aims that also entail inevitable, if unwanted, negative consequences for other instances of human goods.

This overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary. In the legislative arena, especially when the country is closely divided, compromises tend to be the rule the day. But when judges rule this or that policy unconstitutional, there’s little room for compromise: One side must win, the other must lose. In constitutional litigation, too, experiments and pilot programs — real-world laboratories in which ideas can be assessed on the results they produce — are not possible. Ideas are tested only in the abstract world of legal briefs and lawyers arguments. As a society, we lose the benefit of the give-and-take of the political process and the flexibility of social experimentation that only the elected branches can provide.

If I cannot convince you that originalism is the proper interpretive theory for our Constitution, I hope to convince you (to borrow from Churchill) that originalism is the worst form of constitutional interpretation, except for all the others.

Of course, if the law offends the Constitution a judge may strike it down. But there’s nothing in the Constitution that forbids the people’s representatives from adopting stupid laws.

In truth, the push and pull between national and local authorities that federalism allows has nothing to do with benefiting one party or another; it has more to do with the fact that no single government can always get it right. Protecting federalism means ensuring that when one government loses its way, another can help light the way back.

I immediately lost what breath I had left. And I am not embarrassed to admit that I couldn’t see the rest of the way down the mountain for the tears.

Of course, the movement for legalizing assisted suicide and euthanasia is at least in part the result of a culture increasingly influenced by strict neutralist concepts of autonomy, itself perhaps the byproduct of the baby boomer generation heading into old age... But when it comes not to defending an abstract "right to die" but to making the very concrete and personal decision whether to die, it seems that something more basic may be in play. We have known since Jefferson's time that old-fashioned suicide is often motivated by mental ailments, depression foremost among these. Yet contemporary assisted suicide and euthanasia advocates have long denied that depression plays any meaningful role in assisted suicide and euthanasia requests. The findings in the Journal of Clinical Oncology now point to a contrary conclusion, suggesting that the desire to seek out any early death at the hands of a doctor is itself not so much the result of a dispassionate and cool response to a poor prognosis as it is the product of diagnosable and treatable depression.

On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise. Forced to leave their ancestral lands in Georgia and Alabama, the Creek Nation received assurances that their new lands in the West would be secure forever.

Our government is one of limited and separated powers, a design deliberately chosen to secure the promise of self-rule and our liberties and to prevent the accumulation of power in too few hands.

Over the years, I have asked myself what I can do about the problem of too much law. Ultimately, I always circle back to the same answer: not much. As a judge, my job is to apply the law. I cannot change the underlying impulses that have led us to a society to regulate ever more, criminalize ever more, and punish ever more. The best I can do is share with you what I have seen from my unusual vantage in our legal system. Judges are not supposed to live "isolated from... society" but are encouraged to engage in a "wide range" of life's activities and "contribute to the law, the legal system, and the administration of justice." Many of my colleagues and predecessors have done just that, offering thoughtful books on an array of topics. It is in that same spirit that I offer this book.
But if any real and lasting change is possible, it will not come from judges like me. It will come from people whose stories are recounted here. As Havel witnessed during the fall of communism, many of the deepest changes in his own society came from "unknown... people who wanted no more than to be able to live within the truth, to play the music they enjoyed, to sing the songs that were relevant to their lives, and to live freely in dignity and partnership... They had been given every opportunity to adapt to the status quo... Yet they decided on a different course."

Often, Native American tribes have come to this court seeking justice only to leave with bowed heads and empty hands. But that is not because this court has no justice to offer them. Our Constitution reserves for the tribes a place — an enduring place — in the structure of American life.

Of course, trying to separate the sacred from the secular can be a tricky business—perhaps especially for a civil court whose warrant does not extend to matters divine.

But if those blessings are to endure, it falls to each of us to do what we can to preserve and pass down civic understanding and the virtues of civility.