Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch opined that too many laws and regulations in America can impinge on fundamental liberties. It’s a rich statement coming from a man who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, thus allowing states to put women or their doctors in jail for endangering or aborting a fetus.
“Too little law and we’re not safe, and our liberties aren’t protected,” Gorsuch told The Associated Press in an interview about his forthcoming book, Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law. “But too much law and you actually impair those same things.”
In the wake of the end of Roe, fourteen states have criminalized abortion, and another 14 states and territories have become “hostile” to abortion, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, meaning lawmakers are moving toward an abortion ban. In Louisiana, lawmakers have made even possessing abortion pills without a valid prescription illegal, so those found with mifepristone and misoprostol who can’t present a prescription could face large fines and jail time. Earlier this year, a caucus representing House Republicans endorsed a national abortion ban — something Donald Trump and vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance have previously supported.
But apparently those aren’t the kinds of laws Gorsuch meant when he said: “There were just so many cases that came to me in which I saw ordinary Americans, just everyday, regular people trying to go about their lives, not trying to hurt anybody or do anything wrong and just getting whacked, unexpectedly, by some legal rule they didn’t know about.”
Gorsuch also spoke on Fox News about the proposed Supreme Court reforms put forth by the Biden Administration. “I just say: Be careful,” Gorsuch warned.
He added that an independent judiciary “means that when you’re unpopular, you can get a fair hearing.”
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris proposed court reform following stories of Justice Clarence Thomas’ undisclosed gifts and vacations funded by right-wing, Nazi-obsessed billionaire Harlan Crow as well as the court’s ruling that Donald Trump and other former presidents have immunity against prosecution for official acts committed while in office — a decision that shocked even the Trump team.
Biden and Harris called for Congress to impose 18-year term limits for Supreme Court justices and for a binding code of ethics “that require justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest.”
Gorsuch declined to comment on the proposed reforms specifically, citing a desire to stay out of campaign issues during an election cycle.
“I’m not going to get into what is now a political issue during a presidential election year,” he said. “I don’t think that would be helpful.”
Last month, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan publicly supported the idea of an enforceable ethics code.
“It’s a hard thing to do to figure out who exactly should be doing this and what kinds of sanctions would be appropriate for violations of the rules, but I feel as though we, however hard it is, that we could and should try to figure out some mechanism for doing this,” Kagan said.
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