Justice Neil Gorsuch is pushing back against President Joe Biden’s recent proposals to restructure the Supreme Court.
“I just say: Be careful,” Gorsuch warned in an interview that aired on “Fox News Sunday.”
Less than a week after Biden announced he was reversing course and supporting 18-year term limits for justices and legislation to create a binding ethics code for the high court, the first of President Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court appointees encouraged Americans to think long and hard before taking steps that might undermine the independence of the judicial system.
“The independent judiciary … What does it mean to you as an American?” Gorsuch asked about Biden’s new plan during an interview linked to a new book Gorsuch is releasing this week. “It means that when you’re unpopular, you can get a fair hearing.”
“If you’re in the majority, you don’t need judges and juries, to hear you, to protect your rights, if you’re popular,” Gorsuch continued. “It’s there for the moments when the spotlight’s on you — when the government’s coming after you. And don’t you want a ferociously independent judge and a jury of your peers to make those decisions?”
That’s a very odd thing to say. People in the “majority” (however that’s defined for this purpose) don’t need judges and juries to protect their rights because they’re popular? Is that how this works? That’s news to me. I thought the judiciary was there to protect the rights of everyone regardless of their relative popularity. Good to know.
Meanwhile., Judge Chutkan is right out of the gate on the J6 case via TPM:
After its ponderous sojourn at the Supreme Court, the Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump was officially returned Friday to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., and she immediately picked it back up again and started moving it forward.
Among her initial actions, notably undertaken over the weekend, Chutkan:
–set a Friday, Aug. 9 deadline for the parties to submit a proposed scheduling order for pretrial proceedings;
–set a status conference for next Friday, Aug. 16,
–denied a pending Trump motion to dismiss the case on statutory grounds, but gave him the chance to re-up it once the immunity questions in the case are resolved.
–denied a pending Trump motion to dismiss the case on the grounds of selective and vindictive prosecution.
And just like that, the case was up and running again. But don’t hold your breath that this will go to trial before the election. Time is simply too short at this point.
The elephant in the room is the Supreme Court’s expansive ruling in this very case on presidential immunity, how much that narrows the indictment, what kind of evidentiary hearings Chutkan needs to address presidential immunity, and the still-unknown ways in which the high court’s unprecedented ruling effects this and the other Trump prosecutions.
Hanging over all of that will be at least one more trip to the Supreme Court to give it a chance to weigh in on whether Chutkan properly jumped through all the hoops it has put in her way. Again, there’s no way for all this to happen before Election Day.
In her order denying Trump’s motion to dismiss for selective and vindictive prosecution, Chutkan used some of the same direct and non-nonsense language that had marked her earlier handling of the case:
At the outset, the court must address—as it has before—Defendant’s improper reframing of the allegations against him. … At this stage, the court cannot accept Defendant’s alternate narrative.
Well!
Sadly, the Supreme Court majority seems to have decided that Trump is a persecuted minority who needs their protection so I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Sure, he refused to accept the results of the election and incited an insurrection but you can’t hold him responsible because his allegedly powerful political rivals are the ones trying to hold him to it.