How Badly Is Neil Gorsuch Annoying the Other Supreme Court Justices?

[octoberlib]

We all know about Gorsuch's appearance with McConnell in Kentucky and speech at Trump's DC hotel, so I skipped those paragraphs in the article.

By Jeffery Toobin

There is nothing unlawful about Gorsuch’s speeches, though it’s hard to say just what the ethical rules are for Supreme Court Justices. They are exempt from the code that governs the conduct of other federal judges, so the Court has traditionally relied on informal self-policing. There is a strong internal culture based on the idea that no Justice should embarrass the Court; Gorsuch’s tiptoeing up to the line of advocacy for and gratitude to conservatives might earn some advice from the Chief Justice to mind the unwritten rules.

Gorsuch’s speeches might appear less distasteful to his colleagues if he had made an otherwise more graceful début on the Court. As Linda Greenhouse observed in the Times at the end of Gorsuch’s first term, he managed to violate the Court’s traditions as soon as he arrived. He dominated oral arguments, when new Justices are expected to hang back. He instructed his senior colleagues, who collectively have a total of a hundred and forty years’ experience on the Court, about how to do their jobs. Dissenting from a decision that involved the interpretation of federal laws, he wrote, “If a statute needs repair, there’s a constitutionally prescribed way to do it. It’s called legislation.” Perhaps he thought that the other Justices were unfamiliar with this thing called “legislation.” Gorsuch also expressed ill-disguised contempt for Anthony Kennedy’s landmark opinion legalizing same-sex marriage in all fifty states. Earlier this year, the Court’s majority overturned an Arkansas ruling that the state could refuse to put the name of a birth mother’s same-sex spouse on their child’s birth certificate. Dissenting, Gorsuch wrote, “Nothing in Obergefell spoke (let alone clearly) to the question.” That “let alone clearly” reflected a conservative consensus that Kennedy’s opinion was a confusing mess.

Perhaps Gorsuch will, as the years pass, prove to be a more clubbable colleague; or perhaps he’ll decide, at least socially, to go his own way. But what’s already clear is his ideology as a Justice. In his first fifteen cases on the Court, as the number-crunchers at FiveThirtyEight discovered, he joined Thomas, the most right-wing Justice, every time—and he even joined all of Thomas’s concurring opinions. Gorsuch’s outside activities may draw a private word from the Chief Justice, but Roberts would never presume (or want) to change Gorsuch’s votes. And the new Justice is casting those just as his sponsors had hoped and his opponents had feared.


https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/how-badly-is-neil-gorsuch-annoying-the-other-supreme-court-justices



Why should Supreme Court Justices be exempt from the ethical code that governs other federal judges? This makes no sense to me. Human nature being what it is, you can't just take for granted that everybody appointed is going to act ethically.

[janterry]

1. He might piss Kennedy off so much

that he stalls his retirement (longer).

(the silver lining)

[octoberlib]

2. I hope Kennedy stays as long as hes

physically able to.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. For Gorsuch, going on the Supreme Court might be similar to returning to law school

where your words are dissected and criticized and torn apart. Your views attacked by your fellow law students, not the professor.

He may be the newest associate justice, but that doesn't make him the wisest and well-versed on the Constitution.

[Zoonart]

4. About that ethical code thingy....

let's' not forget that Supreme Court Justices can be impeached.

[octoberlib]

5. I wondered what the process was to remove a bad Justice. Interesting.

[Zoonart]

6. It. has happened only once...

Samuel Chase (April 17, 1741 – June 19, 1811) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court and a signatory to the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of Maryland. He was impeached on grounds of letting his partisan leanings affect his court decisions, but was acquitted by the Senate and remained in office.

So there is a constitutional mechanism and there is precedent.

[underpants]

7. Toobin - good read

Thanks

[CrispyQ]

8. He's a no-integrity pile of shit. Just like McConnell & just like Trump. -nt