Neil Gorsuch Confirmation Process Discussion (confirmed 54-45)

[Dereich]

Ah, revenge! Republicans said disingenuous things about why they were holding no hearings or vote on any nominee put forward by President Barack Obama, and now some Democrats here want to say things even more disingenuous, obviously out of a petty desire for sheer revenge.
A plague on both your parties.

I need to find out whether Gorsuch actually is an originalist. I particularly need to find out whether Gorsuch knows what was the originally understood meaning of the 9th Amendment, and what were the originally understood meanings of the Due Process Clauses of the 5th and 14th, and what was the originally understood meaning of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th.

All indications I've seen point to Gorsuch being a textualist. True dyed-in-the-wool originalists have a very hard time getting into high judicial position; the changes they want tend to be radical and align with no other judicial groups. Justice Thomas is an aberration we are unlikely to see again for a long time.

[Dereich]

seems like gorsuch has spilled the water of a small lake on the idea he would kill roe vs wade.....said he wants to move on and the question is settled.

No, he deliberately avoided answering the question. He said that it had precedent, that that had been reaffirmed many times, and that that is something that should be considered in considering future cases, although he would not comment on hypothetical future cases for reasons of fairness.

Plessy vs Ferguson was a long standing SCOTUS precedent.

Technically Plessy v. Ferguson still IS longstanding precedent. It has never been directly overturned, just narrowed into total non-functionality.

[Dereich]

Useless tidbit:

Unanimous Supreme Court overturns a Gorsuch decision ... in the middle of his confirmation hearing

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/3/22/1646072/-Unanimous-Supreme-Court-overturns-a-Gorsuch-decision-in-the-middle-of-his-confirmation-hearing

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These things happen all the time; the curse of the Circuit Court judges is that they have to interpret what both the legislature and the Supreme Court REALLY meant without primary sources to rely upon while at the same time they must keep to their own precedents and stay away from radical re-examinations of the law that only SCOTUS can do. Here's a good few lines from Gorsuch's opinion on how prior precedents led him to this standard.

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Its not difficult to take SCOTUS precident saying "we're just trying to provide access" and uncontested 10th circuit precedent saying "you're required to do more than nothing, but we're not requiring a set level of functionality" and coming up with "as long as the school had a disability program and it wasn't a sham, its fine." There's no shame in not wanting to act outside prior precedent and set new standards from nowhere; it was SCOTUS's prerogative to clarify and that's what they did.