Trump wrong to criticise judges, says his Supreme Court nominee
DONALD TRUMP’S nominee to join the Supreme Court last night criticised the President’s attacks on federal judges as “disheartening” and “demoralising”.
At his Senate confirmation hearing, Neil Gorsuch also stated that a woman’s right to abortion has been upheld in court many times, risking a backlash from some conservatives, and said of Mr Trump “no man is above the law”.
In February, the President called a Seattle judge who blocked his immigration and travel ban a “so-called judge”.
“When anyone criticises the honesty, integrity, the motives of a federal judge, I find that disheartening. I find that demoralising, because I know the truth,” Mr Gorsuch, the Oxford-educated judge, said yesterday.
When asked by Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator, whether “anyone” included the president, Mr Gorsuch replied: “Anyone is anyone.”
Mr Trump has said he wanted to appoint a judge who would overturn Roe vs Wade – the landmark ruling that every state must provide access to abortion.
However, Mr Gorsuch said yesterday that Mr Trump had never asked him to overturn the 1973 Supreme Court ruling, and that, if the Republican president had done so, “I would have walked out the door”.
Mr Gorsuch does not have a history of ruling on abortion cases and the subject was one of the first topics broached during yesterday’s question-andanswer session of Mr Gorsuch’s confirmation hearing before the senate judiciary committee.
“Roe vs Wade, decided in 1973, is a precedent of the United States Supreme Court,” he said. “It has been reaffirmed and all of the other factors that go into analysing precedent have to be considered. A good judge will consider it as precedent of the United States Supreme Court, worthy as treatment of precedent like any other. Once a case is settled, that adds to the determinacy of the law.”
The 49-year-old said that “no man is above the law” when pressed on whether Mr Trump could reinstitute torture as an interrogation method.
“When I became a judge, they gave me a gavel, not a rubber stamp,” Mr Gorsuch said. “I am my own man,”
The choice of a judge to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016, has been contentious.
Barack Obama, the then-president, was blocked from nominating his choice of judge, Merrick Garland – something which infuriated the Democrats, because the judges serve for life.
Mr Trump then nominated Mr Gorsuch, a Colorado-based judge.
Democrats have complained that he has favoured the wealthy and powerful in more than 10 years as a federal judge, but Mr Gorsuch, in his second day of hearings, said that he has tried to be a “neutral and independent” judge. When asked about whether he would block the two attempts to introduce a travel ban – as three appeal court judges have done – he said he could not say.
“I have offered no promises on how I’d rule, in any case, to anyone and I don’t think it’s appropriate for a judge to do so,” he said.