Gorsuch says he'll repeal and replace the Fourth Amendment with something terrific
This is not how judges are supposed to behave.
IAN MILLHISER JUN 24, 2018, 11:26 AM
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump offered a vague promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act with “something terrific.” On Friday, Neil Gorsuch, who occupies the seat on the Supreme Court that Senate Republicans held open until Trump could fill it, brought a similar amount of thoughtfulness and coherence to the question of when police should be allowed to conduct a search without a warrant.
Gorsuch’s dissenting opinion in Carpenter v. United States is an odd piece of writing. It reads less like a judicial opinion and more like the sort of essay that an overworked law professor might toss off after they suddenly realize that they have a symposium paper due at the end of the week. After lecturing his colleagues for 20 pages about how he has uncovered a way of interpreting the Fourth Amendment that is more “tied to the law” than the last half-century of Supreme Court opinions on this subject, Gorsuch outright refuses to apply this mysterious new interpretation to the case at hand.
Carpenter asked whether law enforcement can, without first getting a warrant, use cell phone records to pinpoint where a particular suspect traveled over a course of weeks, months, or potentially even years. A majority of the Court — Chief Justice John Roberts plus the four liberal justices — held that the answer to this question is “no.”
Until its final pages, Gorsuch’s dissent reads as if he agrees with the majority’s conclusion — it’s only at the very end that Gorsuch reveals he is casting a vote in favor of the government because the lawyers on the other side failed to anticipate the specific way that Gorsuch wants to repeal and replace a half-century of established law.
https://thinkprogress.org/gorsuch-says-hell-repeal-and-replace-the-fourth-amendment-with-something-terrific-9238f5568313/
= new reply since forum marked as read
the govt and the 4th Amendment. Glad to hear bc the 2nd Amendment will be on the table for the Democrats hopefully.
NEVER in the campaign did dt say he was going to re-structure the govt and gorsuch never said at the Senate Confirmation Hearings, that he was aiming to re-write the 4th amendment.
How is this stuff all happening all of a sudden? The ripping off of our elections has brought us to this.
