"Everybody knows the nominee is a qualified, mainstream, independent judge of the highest caliber."

Prepared Floor Remarks of Senator Chuck Grassley

Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee

on the Nomination of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch

to Serve as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

 

Today we’ll continue to debate the nomination of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch to serve as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

 

The Judiciary Committee held four full days of hearings last month. The judge testified for more than twenty hours.

 

He answered more than a thousand questions during his testimony and hundreds more for the record. We’ve had the opportunity to review the 2,700 cases he’s heard. And we’ve had the opportunity to review the more than 180,000 pages of documents produced by the Bush Library and the Department of Justice.

 

After all of this, my Democrat colleagues unfortunately appear to remain committed to a filibuster.

 

Even after all of this process, there’s no attack against the judge that sticks.

 

In fact, it’s been clear since before the judge was nominated that some members in Democratic leadership would search desperately for a reason to oppose him.

 

As the Minority Leader said before the nomination, “it’s hard for me to imagine a nominee that Donald Trump would choose that would get Republican support that we could support.”

 

He said later: “If the nominee is out of the mainstream, we’ll do our best to hold the seat open.”

 

But then, the President nominated Judge Gorsuch. This judge is eminently qualified to fill Justice Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court. There’s no denying it.

 

A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, he earned a doctorate degree in Philosophy from Oxford University and served as a law clerk to two Supreme Court Justices.

 

During a decade in private practice, he earned a reputation as a distinguished trial and appellate lawyer. He served with distinction in the Department of Justice. He was confirmed to the Tenth Circuit by unanimous voice vote.

 

And the record he’s built during his decade on the bench has earned him the universal respect of his colleagues both on the bench and in the bar.

 

Faced with an unquestionably qualified nominee, my Democrat colleagues have continually moved the goal post, setting test after test for the judge to meet. But this judge has passed them all with flying colors.

 

The Democrats are left with a “No” vote in search of a reason.

 

First, the Minority Leader announced that the nominee must prove himself to be a “mainstream” judge.

 

Consider his record.

 

Well, Judge Gorsuch has heard 2,700 cases and written 240 published opinions. He’s voted with the majority in 99 percent of cases and 97 percent of the cases he’s heard have been decided unanimously.

 

Only one of those 2,700 cases was ever reversed by the Supreme Court, and Judge Gorsuch didn’t write the opinion.

 

Then consider what others say about him.

 

He’s been endorsed by prominent Democrat members of the Supreme Court bar, including Neal Katyal, President Obama’s Acting Solicitor General. He wrote a New York Times op-ed entitled: “Why Liberals Should Back Neil Gorsuch.”

 

Mr. Katyal wrote: “I have no doubt that if confirmed, Judge Gorsuch would help to restore confidence in the rule of law.” He went on to write that the Judge’s record “should give the American people confidence that he will not compromise principle to favor the President who appointed him.”

 

Likewise, David Frederick, a board member of the liberal American Constitution Society, says we should “applaud such independence of mind and spirit in Supreme Court nominees.”

 

So it’s clear that the judge is “mainstream.”

 

Next, we hear that the judge doesn’t care about the “little guy” and instead rules for the “big guy.”

 

That’s a goofy argument.

 

Just ask liberal law professor Noah Feldman. He says this criticism is a “truly terrible idea” because “the rule of law isn’t liberal or conservative—and it shouldn’t be.”

 

The strategy on this point became clear during the hearing.

 

Pour through 2,700 cases, cherry pick a couple where sympathetic plaintiffs were on the losing end of the legal argument, and then attack the judge for that result and label him “against” the little guy.

 

As silly as that argument is, the judge himself laid waste to it during the hearing when he rattled off a number of cases where the so-called “little guy” came out on the winning end of the legal argument at issue.

 

At any rate, as we discussed at length during his hearings that the judge applies the law neutrally to every party before him.

 

I disagree with some of my colleagues who’ve argued that judging is not just a matter of applying neutral principles. I think that view is inconsistent with the role our judges play in our system and the oath they take.

 

That oath requires them to do “equal right to the poor and the rich” and to apply the law “without respect to persons.”

 

This is what it means to live under the rule of law—and this is what our nominee has done during his decade on the bench.

 

So, the judge applies law “without respect to persons,” as he promised.

 

And then of course, the judge has been criticized for the work he did on behalf of his former client, the United States government.

 

Of course, we’ve had a lot of nominees over the years who had worked as lawyers in the government. Most recently, Justice Kagan worked as the Solicitor General.

 

As we all know, she argued before the Supreme Court that the government could constitutionally ban pamphlet materials. That’s a pretty radical position for the United States to take.

 

So, she was asked about that argument during her hearing.

 

Her answer?

 

She said she was a government lawyer making an argument on behalf of her client, and it had nothing to do with her personal views on the subject.

 

But that answer is apparently no longer good enough. Now, to hear the other side tell it, government lawyers are responsible for the positions their clients take.

 

I respect my colleagues who are making this argument. I just don’t think it holds water.

 

What, then, are my colleagues on the other side left with? Because they can’t get any of their attacks on the judge to stick, all they’re left with are complaints about the so-called “dark money” being spent by advocacy groups.

 

As I said yesterday, it speaks volumes about the nominee that after reviewing 2,700 cases, roughly 180,000 pages of documents from the Department of Justice and the George W. Bush library, thousands of pages of briefs, over 20 hours of testimony before the Committee, and hundreds of questions both during and after the hearing, all his detractors are left with is an attack on the nominee’s supporters.

 

The bottom line is that they don’t have any substantive attacks that will stick, so they’ve shifted tactics yet again and are now trying to intimidate and silence those who are speaking out and making their voices heard.

 

But here is the most interesting thing about this development.

 

There are advocacy groups on every side of this nomination.

 

That’s been true of past nominations.

And there’s nothing wrong with citizens engaging in the process.

 

It was certainly true when liberal groups favoring the Garland nomination poured money into Iowa to attack me last year.

 

For some reason, I didn’t hear a lot of my Democrat colleagues complaining about THAT money.

 

And of course, there are groups on the left who are running ads in opposition to this nominee, and threatening primaries for any Democrat who doesn’t toe the line and filibuster the nomination.

 

For some reason, I’m not hearing a lot of complaints about THAT money, either.

 

And as I’ve said, there’s nothing wrong with citizens engaging in the process and making their voices heard. This is one of the ways we’re free to speak our minds in a democracy. It’s been true for a long time.

 

As I said yesterday, if you don’t like outside groups getting involved, the remedy is NOT to intimidate and try to silence that message.

 

The remedy is to support nominees who apply the law as it was written, and leave the legislating to Congress.

 

But regardless what you think of advocacy groups getting involved, there’s certainly no reason to blame this nominee.

 

The truth of the matter is that Democrats have “no principled reason to oppose” this nomination, just as David Frederick said.

 

It’s clear instead that much of the “opposition” to the nominee is pretextual. The merits and qualifications of the nominee apparently no longer matter.

 

The only conclusion we’re left to draw is that the Democrats will refuse to confirm any nominee this Republican President nominates.

 

There’s no reason to think the Democrats would confirm any other judge the President identified as a potential nominee—or any judge he’d nominate.

 

In fact, we don’t even need to speculate on that point.

 

The Minority Leader has made that clear. He said before the President made this nomination: “I can’t imagine us supporting anyone from his list.”

 

So it was clear from the beginning that the Minority Leader was going to lead this unprecedented filibuster. The only question was what excuse he’d manufacture to pin it on.

 

The nominee enjoys broad bipartisan support from those who know him, and he enjoys bipartisan support in the Senate.

 

I recognize that the Minority Leader is under enormous pressure from special interest groups to take this step. And I know other members of his caucus are operating under those pressures as well.

 

In fact, yesterday, while the committee was debating the nomination, a host of liberal and progressive groups held a press conference outside the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, demanding that the campaign arm cut off campaign funding for any incumbent Democrat who doesn’t filibuster this nominee.

 

Those groups argued that because the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had already raised a lot of money off of the Minority Leader’s announcement that he was going to lead a filibuster, they shouldn’t provide that money to any members who refuse to join that misguided effort.

 

Well, all I can say is it would be truly unfortunate for Democrats to buckle to that pressure and engage in the first partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee in United States history.

 

If they regard this nominee as the first in our history worthy of a partisan filibuster, it’s clear they’d filibuster anyone.

 

But I’ve said since long before the election that the new President would nominate the next Justice and that the Judiciary Committee would process the nomination. That’s just what we’ve done. And now that the matter’s on the floor, I urge my colleagues not to engage in this unprecedented partisan demonstration.

 

Everybody knows the nominee is a qualified, mainstream, independent judge of the highest caliber.

 

Republicans know it.

 

Democrats know it.

 

And as left-leaning editorial boards across the country prove, even the press knows it.

 

I urge my colleagues on the other side to come to their senses and not engage in the first partisan filibuster in United States history, and instead to join me and vote in favor of Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation.

 

 

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