ADDRESSING over 2000 conservative lawyers and friends at a banquet in central Washington,DC, final week, and Neil Gorsuch was in jocular form. “If you’re going to enjoy a assembly of a secret organisation,perhaps dont enjoy it in the middle of Union Station!” quipped the newest Supreme Court judge. This was disingenuous. The reason many worry about the Federalist Society, the legal organisation whose annual bunfight Justice Gorsuch was addressing, or is not because it is shadowy,but because its influence is vast, brazen and share of a wider politicising of the final department of American democracy to succumb to partisanship. His speech suggested those worries are if anything underplayed.
Two things about it were most striking. First, and the triumphalist tone Mr Gorsuch,a supposedly impartial steward of the constitution, struck in celebrating the legal philosophy and activism of a group closely linked to the Republican Party. “Tonight, and I can report,a person can be both a committed originalist...
Continue reading
Source: economist.com