WE’RE ONE WEEK OUT | Gorsuch No Friend Of The Little Guy | Sotomayor At The Farm Talking About Education

March 13, 2017

We are just a week away from the Senate Judiciary hearings to commence on the nomination of JUDGE NEIL GORSUCH. While we count down the days, Scott Bomboy with Constitution Daily looks back at early SCOTUS hearings and how little they resembled their modern counterparts, especially since public confirmation hearings were not established until 1916 with the “contentious nomination” of LOUIS BRANDEIS.

“NEIL GORSUCH’S journey began with a covert mission in January. He snuck over to his neighbor’s house to meet two White House aides in a rental car. From there, the group dodged camera crews and took country roads to a military base to board a plane headed toward Washington.” CNN’s Ariane de Vogue describes in her latest piece what she calls “the beginning of a stealth nomination.”

“Corporate tool. Enemy of disabled people. Deferential to the privileged, including the man who chose him.” Those are just some of the attacks Democrats are hurling at JUDGE GORSUCH in the final days before his confirmation hearing. Matt Flegenheimer with The New York Times reports on the Democrats’ most prominent line of attack: “Judge Gorsuch’s rulings have favored the powerful and well connected. And he has done little, they will say, to demonstrate his independence from a president whose combative relationship with the judiciary has already clouded the nominated process.”

Eric J. Segall in the Los Angeles Times argues—just as JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN did two decades ago—that the confirmation process offers no real substance on the views of a nominee. Segall urges that this time around, senators need to ensure that the SCOTUS nominee actually answer the tough questions and disclose his real views on constitutional questions. “The American people have a right to know.”

Friday night, a panel of federal judges in San Antonio ruled that Texas’s Republican-led legislature gerrymandered some of the state’s congressional districts to stunt the growing influence of minority voters. This is the latest development in a long-running and racially charged redistricting case that locked Democratic lawmakers, minority groups, the Obama administration and the Texas Republican leadership in a legal battle for nearly six years. The ruling invalidated three congressional districts, though it did not prescribe a remedy. However, a redrawing of the districts will probably aid Latino and Democratic voters.

ICYMI, the Trump administration decided to clean house on Friday and call for the resignation of 46 Obama-appointed U.S. attorneys. Atty. Gen. JEFF SESSIONS called for the resignations because he wanted “to ensure a uniform transition” to the Trump administration. But Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney in Manhattan, wouldn’t go out so easy. After refusing to resign, he was fired on Saturday.

“Books gave me the wonderful opportunity to learn something new. I understood the power of education then. Education opens you inside and out, and learning opens the world and opens you to greater opportunity.” That was JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR speaking at Stanford last week about the importance of education. The justice also stressed how critical it is to respect opposing positions. “Don’t start thinking that the other side has no basis for their feelings,” she said. “There is something in what they’re saying to you about their views, their needs…that has justification.”