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Is Neil Gorsuch to Blame for the Supreme Court’s Slow Pace?

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Anthony M. Kennedy, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, swears in Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch on Monday, April 10, 2017, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C. Also shown, Gorsuch’s wife Louise stands on stage holding a family Bible. Justice Gorsuch is the Supreme Court’s 113th justice. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Ilya Shapiro, The Cato Institute’s senior fellow in constitutional studies, writes that the court’s slow pace in decisions this Spring has less to do with its newest appointed justice, Neil Gorsuch, and more to do with the full slate of complicated decisions sitting before the court. Despite that, Shapiro says the decisions handed down thus far have shed some light on what type of justice Gorusch will be, and how he differs from others on the bench. Shapiro writes:

The Supreme Court is on a record slow pace for deciding cases this term, leading to speculation that the justices are having a hard time incorporating their newest colleague, Neil Gorsuch. Of course, the real issue is more likely to be that, after an eight-justice year when the court shied away from particularly difficult issues, the justices have a slew of controversial cases on their hands, ranging from compelled support of unions to compelled baking of wedding cakes, to sports gambling to partisan gerrymandering to the travel ban.

Regardless, we can actually discern quite a bit about the court’s internal dynamic from the lower-profile opinions that come down while we await those big cases. Indeed, it’s often the cases with less political valence where the justices can “nerd out” on legal theories and reveal their jurisprudential minds when they know their decisions won’t make the front pages.

Such was the case where a series of recent decisions teased out differences between justices Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas. In Gorsuch’s first (abbreviated) term, these two were together on all the cases they heard together, leading some observers to wonder whether the new justice was less like the man he replaced, Antonin Scalia, and more like the most court’s most conservative member.

Gorsuch and Thomas actually diverged several times this term—on the early statistics, Gorsuch is closer to Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy, but the last two weeks of April really showed the variance in their approaches. While both are originalists and textualists, with a deep devotion to constitutional text, structure, and history, they sometimes come out differently when the law is unclear. That’s not particularly surprising to anyone who’s been following the relevant legal debates, but it should give pause to anyone who thinks that “originalism” is code for conservative policy results.

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E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. His focus at all times is on preparing clients and readers for “Times Like These.” E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zildjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart (RIP) of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com