Friday, March 29, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor

The Significance of the Hearings on the Nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the United States Supreme Court.

April 5, 2017 --

Senator Orrin G. Hatch, (R-Utah) pointed out, in an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, March 27, that Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wanted Judge Neil Gorsuch to “answer politically charged hypotheticals about future cases.”

Sen. Hatch commented that asking judicial nominees “to prejudice themselves raises serious due-process concerns for future litigants, who deserve the opportunity to make their arguments full.” Sen. Hatch criticized committee Democrats for attacking Judge Gorsuch for failing to indicate how he would rule on future cases.

The issue, however, goes beyond a given judicial nomination to the United States Supreme Court to betray the present judicial mindset of the left. The left, today, is not interested in the rule of law; it demands the rule of ideology. For the left, the blindfold must be removed from the Statue of Justice and the scales she holds must be tilted sharply to the left.

Sen. Hatch suggested in his op-ed that Judge Gorsuch reaches his results “by the best reading of the law, free from a political agenda.” Is Sen. Hatch really unaware that for the left, today, the proper result is reached via the particular political agenda the left holds at any particular time? Sen. Hatch criticized committee Democrats for “dishonest attacks and scorched-earth tactics” to defeat the Gorsuch nomination. Sen. Hatch pulled his punches. He should have denounced committee Democrats for violating their oath to uphold the U.S. constitution by making due process of the law subordinate to ideological goals.