[I]n Citizens United... justices ruled that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend their money to influence elections. The decision was wildly unpopular, with poles showing an overwhelming majority of both Democrats and Republicans opposed. ...As of 2016, sixteen states and hundreds of municipalities had endorsed a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United...

The problem with that approach is that it is great if you happen to be the party in the case whom the judge likes; it is not so great if you are the other guy. Justice Scalia believed this to his very core. He was an eloquent champion of the Constitution who was guided by important principles like applying the law equally to all, giving every litigant a fair shake, and rulings based on the actual meaning of the Constitution and our laws, not what you or your preferred political constituency wished they meant. These principles helped guide Justice Scalia for many years. The record of Judge Gorsuch indicates that he will continue this legacy of fair and impartial justice. Now, of course, that does not much matter to some over here on the far left. Despite his sterling credentials and bipartisan support, some on the far left decided to oppose Judge Gorsuch before he was even nominated. We already know what they will say about him as well. It is the same thing they have been saying about every Republican nominee for more than four decades. They said Gerald Ford's nominee, John Paul Stevens, "revealed an extraordinary lack of sensitivity to the problems women face." They said Reagan's nominee, Anthony Kennedy, was a "sexist" who would "be a disaster for women." They said George H.W. Bush's nominee, David Souter, was a threat to women, minorities, dissenters, and other disadvantaged groups. So it is not terribly surprising that they would say it again this time. What is disappointing is that leading Democrats in the Senate would adopt the same rhetoric. The ink was not even dry on Judge Gorsuch's nomination when the Democratic leader proclaimed that Judge Gorsuch had--you guessed it--demonstrated a hostility toward women's rights. I hope our colleagues will stick to the facts this time around.

Madam President, last night President Trump announced an outstanding nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch of Colorado. While Judge Gorsuch has a significant legacy to live up to as the nominee for the seat left vacant by the loss of Justice Scalia, I am confident his impressive background and long record of service will prepare him well for the task ahead. Like Justice Scalia, Judge Gorsuch understands the constitutional limits of his authority. He understands that a judge's duty is to apply the law evenhandedly, without bias toward one party or another. He understands that his role as a judge is to interpret the law, not impose his own viewpoint or political leanings. He has also been recognized from people on both sides of the aisle as a consistent, principled, and fair jurist. Judge Gorsuch has a stellar reputation and a resume to match, with degrees from Harvard and Columbia, a Ph.D. in legal philosophy from Oxford, and just about every honor, award, and scholarship you can possibly imagine.

This is a judge who is known for deciding cases based on how the law is actually written, not how he wishes it were written, even when it leads to results that conflict with his own political beliefs. He understands that his role as a judge is to interpret the law, not impose his own viewpoint. Here is how Judge Gorsuch himself put it: "A judge who likes every result he reaches is very likely a bad judge, reaching for results he prefers rather than those the law compels." Some of our colleagues and some others on the left see the role of a judge very differently. In last year's Presidential debate, our former colleague, Secretary Clinton, stated her view that a Supreme Court Justice--now listen to this--ought to look more favorably on certain political constituencies than others; that it was the job of the Supreme Court to "stand on the side" of this group or another over that one. Some of our current colleagues seem to share this view. The assistant Democratic leader said that what is important to him are the political views of a Supreme Court nominee, what or perhaps whom they are going to stand for.

When he graduated from law school, Judge Gorsuch did not just clerk for one Supreme Court Justice, he clerked for two. They were Justices nominated by Presidents of different political parties--Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, and Byron White, who was nominated by JFK. Judge Gorsuch received a unanimously "well qualified" rating by the American Bar Association when he was nominated to his current position on the court of appeals. He was confirmed without any votes in opposition. That is right--not a single Democrat opposed Judge Gorsuch's confirmation, not Senator Barack Obama, not Senator Hillary Clinton, not Senators Joe Biden or Ted Kennedy. In fact, not a single one of the Democrats who still serve with us opposed him, including the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Feinstein, and the Democratic leader himself, Senator Schumer. In the coming days, I hope and expect that all Senate colleagues will again give him fair consideration, just as we did for the nominees of newly elected Presidents Clinton and Obama.

We should stop pretending that the US is a functioning democracy; Citizens United proves we are not—when the courts grant citizenship powers to corporations, money and greed become the nation’s lifeblood, not the will of the people.

At bottom, the court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

I think the Supreme Court has made some terrible decisions

Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas insist that they are "originalists,"... interpreting our Constitution as a document fixed in time. No honest originalist could... have signed on to Citizens United, but intellectually corrupt justices who worship corporatism, disdain the poor and enjoy the perks of power...

Several of these conservative Justices, who are in no way accountable to the American people, have lied to the U.S. Senate, ripped up the Constitution and defiled both precedent and the Supreme Court’s reputation — all at the expense of tens of millions of women who could soon be stripped of their bodily autonomy and the constitutional rights they’ve relied on for half a century.

We believe … in obedience to, and respect for the judicial department of government. We think its decisions on Constitutional questions, when fully settled, should control, not only the particular cases decided, but the general policy of the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendments of the Constitution as provided in that instrument itself. More than this would be revolution. But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. … If this important decision had been made by the unanimous concurrence of the judges, and without any apparent partisan bias, and in accordance with legal public expectation, and with the steady practice of the departments throughout our history, and had been in no part, based on assumed historical facts which are not really true; or, if wanting in some of these, it had been before the court more than once, and had there been affirmed and re-affirmed through a course of years, it then might be, perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, to not acquiesce in it as a precedent.

North Carolina was the scene of the crime of the worst voter suppression, after the case out of Alabama and when the Supreme Court gutted Section 5. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that it’s like putting away your umbrella — the Shelby case, it was — putting away your umbrella in a rainstorm. And in North Carolina, Amy, when it was done, the Republicans there said, “Now that the problem has — the headache has been removed, we can do what we want to.” And guess what. Everything Pence just said, we heard in 2013. And they tried to roll back every progressive way of voting. And they actually went to the books and looked at how did it benefit Black and Brown people and young people, and those were the rules they tried to roll back. And the court said it was surgical — surgical racism. And what I saw in North Carolina, what we defeated in North Carolina, what we filed suit against in North Carolina, is now what Trump and Pence are talking about doing on the national level: surgical racism with surgical precision.

The suppression of citizens' right to assemble and voice their concerns hampers the democratic ideals the country aspires to uphold.

Four years after Citizens United, the Supreme Court expanded the rights... in the Hobby Lobby case. ...The company ...was allowed an exemption from a federal rule requiring large employers to include birth control in their employee's health plans. The Hobby Lobby decision has since been cited to support the claims of businesses whose owners do not wish to provide wedding services to same-sex couples on grounds of religion.