ZadekpediaNeil Gorsuch is discussed across four episodes of The Bob Zadek Show as a Supreme Court nominee whose confirmation would shift the Court’s direction on major political questions. The episodes treat his nomination as a consequential event in the political life of the country, debated by guests holding differing views on the value and danger of judicial power.
The 2017 nomination
In a February 2017 episode on the Articles of Confederation, Bob Zadek told guest William Watkins Jr. that he found the greatest hope for change in the Supreme Court, because one or two changes in the composition of the court in the right direction would produce profound change, and that Neil Gorsuch was a step in the right direction Crossroads for Liberty with William Watkins Jr. (2017). Watkins agreed that there was great leverage, and said that whatever one thinks about Donald Trump, he had done a real solid with the nomination of Gorsuch, who seemed to be a strong originalist and definitely someone who could fill the seat of a Justice Scalia. Watkins added a concern: he had a fundamental problem with the court serving as a final arbiter of the Constitution and with nine unelected individuals exercising the power that they do, preferring that the popular branches or state legislatures, which are accountable to the people, be more in the process.
A March 2017 episode was devoted to the nomination itself. Zadek opened by describing the Senate’s interview with Gorsuch as a Kabuki theater of make-believe and a show trial of sorts, and said the Senate would now do its procedural things, hopefully leading to confirmation and to Justice Neil Gorsuch Judge Gorsuch on the Hot Seat (2017). His guest, Ilya Shapiro, a Senior Fellow of Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute and Editor-in-Chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review, said the Supreme Court plays an increasingly large role in political discourse, that every important political issue of the past decade had come before it, and that the vacancy was important because which president and party got to make the appointment would change the direction the court would go on the big issues that tend to be decided five to four.
Originalism and the Court’s role
In a February 2019 episode with John McGinnis, a professor of constitutional law at Northwestern University School of Law, McGinnis said Trump deserved enormous credit for the appointment of Gorsuch, who had turned out to be great, and that Trump’s judicial appointments were the best of any president, even better than those of Ronald Reagan Here Comes the Storm (2019). McGinnis described the theory that the justices are Republican schoolmasters who, in their decisions, recall the country to its founding principles, and said that insofar as they follow original principles and articulate them, they could be a great ally in teaching and imbuing the country with those principles again. He contrasted this with justices who had done the opposite, citing Roe v. Wade as made out of nothing and taking away powers from the states.
Court packing and the Garland seat
An April 2019 episode with Ilya Somin addressed the political fight surrounding the seat Gorsuch filled. Somin said that some Democrats who support court packing argue it is a special case because they believe Republicans got away with something improper by blocking the nomination of Garland in 2016, thereby enabling Trump to nominate Gorsuch for that seat How to Create a Legitimacy Crisis (2019). Somin called that evaluation at the very least naive, arguing that if Democrats packed the court in response to Garland, Republicans would be unlikely to accept that it was a justified response to their own bad behavior, and that escalation by one side is likely to generate further escalation by the other. Zadek framed the discussion around his fear that a norm of court packing would weaken judicial review, which he called a cornerstone of the system of government.
Across episodes: the nomination and judicial power
In the 2017 episodes, Zadek and his guests treat the nomination as a source of hope and leverage, with Watkins raising a caveat about unelected judges and Shapiro explaining the Court’s growing role. By the 2019 episodes, the same nomination appears as a settled appointment whose consequences are being assessed: McGinnis calls Gorsuch great and praises Trump’s judicial record, while Somin discusses the Garland seat as the trigger for Democratic court-packing arguments. The earlier treatment is advanced by Zadek, Watkins and Shapiro; the later treatment by McGinnis and Somin.