Judge Gorsuch on the Hot Seat

2017-03-25 · Guest: Ilya Shapiro (Cato Institute Senior Fellow) · 5:28

Significance of the Neil Gorsuch Supreme Court nomination

Bob Zadek discusses the significance of Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court with guest Ilya Shapiro. They explore the court’s growing influence on major political issues and how the vacancy left by Justice Scalia became a pivotal point in the 2016 election.

Topics: Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, Judicial Nominations, Constitutional Law, Cato Institute, Antonin Scalia, Donald Trump

Speakers: Bob Zadek, Ilya Shapiro

The Significance of the Gorsuch Nomination [00:00]

Bob Zadek: Good morning, my friends. Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the only live libertarian talk radio show on the air all weekend. This will be a groundbreaking show because of the stature of our guest and the importance of our topic. We will be—drumroll, please—commercial-free for the entire hour. So when our announcer says “for a full hour,” he meant a full hour.

Today we talk about the nomination and, hopefully, the confirmation of the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to be elevated as Justice Neil Gorsuch to the United States Supreme Court. As you all know, Neil Gorsuch was nominated by Donald Trump. The Senate had its Kabuki theater of make-believe interview with Neil Gorsuch—more about that in a moment. That was sort of a political event, a show trial of sorts. Behind that, the Senate will now do its procedural things, hopefully leading, with a little drama, leading to the confirmation of the appointment, and we will soon have Justice Neil Gorsuch.

To discuss why this appointment is so important, what it all means—and it is important—I’m happy to welcome back to the show Ilya Shapiro. Ilya is a Senior Fellow of Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. Importantly, he is the Editor-in-Chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. He also co-authored Religious Liberties for Corporations: Hobby Lobby, the Affordable Care Act, and the Constitution in 2014. Ilya has testified before Congress on numerous occasions and has appeared on all major media and has written extensively in all of the so-called mainstream media. Ilya last appeared on our show in May of 2016, and with that introduction, Ilya, welcome back to the show. It’s nice to have you.

Ilya Shapiro: It’s good to be on, Bob. This is an important topic and, as President Obama would say, we’re in a teachable moment about the Supreme Court.

Bob Zadek: Oh, this is a teachable moment in so many ways. Now, Ilya, we who watch closely the political process in our country and who are passionate in our political beliefs consider this event to be—it almost is second to none in its importance in the political life of our country. So the first question has to be: there’s a lot of things that go on in Washington. Why is—it’s a two-part question—why is the appointment of a Supreme Court Justice so important, and why is this seat that hopefully will be filled by Justice Gorsuch so important? Why the importance of this?

Ilya Shapiro: Well, the Supreme Court plays an increasingly large role in our political discourse. Just think about the last decade or so. Every important political issue that we face as a country has come before the Supreme Court, whether healthcare, immigration, voting rights, gun rights, gay rights, campaign finance, affirmative action, abortion—all of the top issues have come before the Supreme Court.

And that’s anomalous. It’s not the case that every year, boom, boom, boom, we have two or three of these major blockbusters. That’s sort of the impression that people have because we’ve been living through that. But that’s not the norm. In fact, this term at the Supreme Court, you don’t have those kinds of blockbusters. It feels kind of odd, but that’s kind of a regression towards the mean.

But these are big things. And as the federal government insinuates itself into more and more aspects of our lives, at the end of the day, the buck stops with the Supreme Court. Not because they’re all-knowing Platonic guardians, but because in our system of government, as one of the former justices said about half a century ago, “We’re not final because we’re infallible; we’re infallible because we’re final.” Somebody has to make those calls in that high-stakes litigation at the end of the day, and it comes to the Supreme Court.

And this nomination, this vacancy, this appointment is so important because, well, as we saw during the election, which president, which party got to make the appointment would change the dynamic of the court, would change the direction that the court would go on all of those big important issues that tend to be decided five to four.