Day 12

Happy February!!!

Whew! Neil Gorsuch everyone! The new dude on the supreme bench judge thing. Appointed but not approved, willing but not able...just yet. He has to get past the politics first, and there is a lot of poo flinging going on. 

For some background, Obama tried to appoint his third one of these persons during his last year in the Oval Office, but it got shut down by the GOP majority in the Senate. Now Demos are going to try to make this process as painful as they can. Well, that might be a bit unfair because they COULD just approve Neil and move on to other things. The question is SHOULD they just move on?

Who is Neil Gorsuch?

This is a great article that is nice and short for those with less time or attention span by the University of Colorado Boulder:

http://lawweb.colorado.edu/profiles/profile.jsp?id=321

TLDR:

He's a Doctor of Law and has represented Big Companies all the way down to the One Man Show. He lives in Colorado so you know this guy is super chill.

He believes that Judges should strive:

"to apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, and looking to text, structure, and history to decide what a reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would have understood the law to be—not to decide cases based on their own moral convictions or the policy consequences they believe might serve society best."

At first this kinda sounds off...DON'T use moral convictions and DON'T decide based on what you believe to be best moving forward. However, his context is really solid. Judges should not be politicians. They need to apply and interpret the Law based on what it was meant to do. Not put their own spin on it. The people we ELECT should be the ones changing laws so that the JUDGES can apply it the way we want. If we do not like a law then WE have to vote people into office that will change it so that we DO like it. 

As far as Judges go I like this guy. He appears to be of very sound thinking and fair where the application of the law is concerned. I do not think everyone will like all his decisions but I do feel those decisions are going to be fair according to the law. If we want that law changed we need to VOTE to make it happen. NOT rely on some old (not Neil, he's the youngest by far) folks on some cushy bench to spin it our way. I need the supreme court to apply the law as it is written and then I need US to decide what those laws are based on who we elect to change them. 

Let's do this AMERICA!