Justice Gorsuch Owes Me A Refund

As legal scholars debate the consequences of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to invent new legal protections by re-legislating from the bench the Civil Rights Act of 1964, what concerns me is a more pressing matter: Justice Neil Gorsuch owes me money.

Last year, Gorsuch published a book on his legal philosophy in which he encouraged judicial restraint. He described himself variously as a textualist and an originalist in the mold of Justice Scalia, who is no doubt rolling in his grave after Gorsuch’s overreach this week.

I encourage anyone else who bought the Justice’s book to join me in demanding a refund by mailing the book to the Justice’s chambers with a letter along the following lines:

June 17, 2020

The Hon. Justice Neil Gorsuch

1 First Street, NE

Washington, DC 20543

Dear Justice Gorsuch,

I write to request a refund for your book A Republic, If You Can Keep It, based on your false premise that the book promotes judicial modesty.

In your book, you lambast judges who “pretend to be philosopher-kings with the right or ability to pronounce judgment on all of society’s problems” and praise those who “apply the law’s terms as faithfully as possible.”

You insist, “A judge’s task is not to pursue his own policy vision for the country, whether in the name of some political creed, social science theory, or…to represent (or bend to) popular will” but rather to “apply the Constitution or a congressional statute as it is.”

Yet in your recent majority opinion in the case of Bostock v. Clayton County you have practiced precisely the opposite of what you preached in your book.

You attempted to pass off your decision, in the words of your colleague Justice Alito, “as the inevitable product of the textualist school of statutory interpretation championed by [your] late colleague Justice Scalia,” but your opinion in fact represents “a theory of statutory interpretation that Justice Scalia excoriated.”

Indeed, you excoriated that theory in your own book.

The hardcover lists for $30. Please return that amount to the address enclosed.

I look forward to donating every dollar to the campaign of any presidential or senatorial candidate who can promise the appointment and confirmation of an actual textualist to the Court.

Sincerely

Michael Knowles