Neil Gorsuch Quotes

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.

Courage remains as important in the legal profession today as it was then. Throughout our history lawyers who have made the greatest mark on this country haven't done so because they were smarter or were born into better families or held more important positions; it was because they were willing to stand firm for justice in the face of immense pressure and often at grave personal costs.

What do I mean by courage? Well, let's start with what I don't mean. I don't mean blind bullheadedness or rudeness or incivility. We have all too much of those things in our culture and in our profession. They are pretenders of courage, not the real thing. For true courage will often require you to admit a mistake, hold your tongue, or wait to fight another day. When it requires you to stand up against the powers arrayed around you, it will also require you to do so with not just respect but affection for your fellow citizen. What I mean by courage is what Atticus Finch meant by it in To Kill a Mockingbird. You may remember that Finch defended an African-American man wrongly accused of raping a white woman in Alabama during the Great Depression- and that in taking on the representation he faced criticism and threats from his friends and community. As he told his daughter in the book: "I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."

Much public debate over assisted suicide and euthanasia both in the U.S. and abroad has rested on the implicit premise that requests for assistance in dying are closely linked to pain. But a great many facts have now amassed running counter to this supposition- the Dutch euthanasia regime has moved away from any requirement of physical or psychological suffering; Oregon has never required a showing of pain of any kind; clinical studies continue to suggest that modern palliative techniques, if disseminated and practiced by knowledgeable doctors, are able to address pain in most, if not all, circumstances; Oregon's annual reports and repeated Dutch surveys suggest that pain simply is not a leading reason motivating patient demands for euthanasia or assisted suicide; there has now long persisted a suggestive correlation between divorce and requests for assisted suicide. And now comes the Journal of Clinical Oncology study suggesting that the major motivation behind assisted suicide and euthanasia is not a poor prognosis but depression.

Numbers tell part of the story, but only a part. Today, the law touches our lives in very different ways than it once did. In the past, the rules that governed what happened in our homes, families, houses of worship, and schools were found less in law than in custom or were left to private agreement and individual judgement. Even in the areas of life where law has long played a larger role, its character has changed. Once, most of our law came from local and state authorities; now, federal law often dominates.

The consequences of the law’s focus on individuals rather than groups are anything but academic. Suppose an employer fires a woman for refusing his sexual advances. It’s no defense for the employer to note that, while he treated that individual woman worse than he would have treated a man, he gives preferential treatment to female employees overall. The employer is liable for treating this woman worse in part because of her sex. Nor is it a defense for an employer to say it discriminates against both men and women because of sex. This statute works to protect individuals of both sexes from discrimination, and does so equally. So an employer who fires a woman, Hannah, because she is insufficiently feminine and also fires a man, Bob, for being insufficiently masculine may treat men and women as groups more or less equally. But in both cases the employer fires an individual in part because of sex. Instead of avoiding Title VII exposure, this employer doubles it.

Where this court once stood firm, today it wilts.

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.

In contrast to unintended consequences, intended acts are always within our control, subjects of our free will and choice. Because we can always choose to refrain from doing intentional harm to others- because our purposeful actions are within our control- our intentional choices necessarily reveal more about our character and individuality than any unintended side effect ever can. To disregard whether or not an act is intended would be, thus, in a very real way to disregard the role of free will in the world- leaving, for example, those who fail to assist charities that feed the hungry open to censure and penalties as those who would starve such persons.
Precisely to avoid such acts of injustice in implicit recognition of commonsense (nontheologic) moral power of the double effect insight, secular American criminal law has long calibrated different levels of responsibility and punishment based on different levels of mens rea. The purposeful killer is considered for lethal injection while the individual who kills in self-defense, foreseeing death as a consequence but intending only to stop the aggression, may receive no punishment at all. The driver who speeds with reckless disregard for the consequences to others but without any intent to harm the darting child may receive jail time but is often treated far differently from the depraved killer who sets out witha purposeful plan to murder the child. The one who disregards the hungry and homeless may not command respect and admiration, but he or she is not subjected to the same penalties as one who deliberately harms such persons.

But as a judge looking back, the most you can hope for is you have done fairness to each person who has come before you, decided each case on the facts and the law, and that you have just carried on the tradition of a neutral, impartial judiciary. That is what we do. We just resolve cases and controversies. Lawyers are supposed to be fierce advocates, and I was once a fierce advocate for my clients. But a judge is supposed to listen courteously and rule impartially.

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.

originalism is the worst form of constitutional interpretation, except for all the others.

separation of powers, its role in protecting individual liberty, and the dangers that follow when we forget. When the separation of powers goes ignored, those who suffer first may be the unpopular and least among us

It seems well past time to reconsider our sweeping UPL [Unauthorized Practice of Law] prohibitions. The fact is nonlawyers already perform — and have long performed — many kinds of work traditionally and simultaneously performed by lawyers. Nonlawyers prepare tax returns and give tax advice. They regularly negotiate with and argue cases before the Internal Revenue Service. They prepare patent applications and otherwise advocate on behalf of inventors before the Patent & Trademark Office. And it is entirely unclear why exceptions should exist to help these sort of niche (and some might say, financially capable) populations but not be expanded in ways more consciously aimed at serving larger numbers of lower- and middle-class clients. . . . Consistent with the law of supply and demand, increasing the supply of legal services can be expected to lower prices, drive efficiency, and improve consumer satisfaction.