Boom: Neil Gorsuch Just Made Originalists Happy with One Simple Question

Donald Trump’s first appointee to the Supreme Court wasted no time in making his voice heard (literally) before the chamber Monday morning. Among the first questions Justice Neil Gorsuch asked was a positive indicator for originalists who supported his nomination.

Gorsuch’s process of finding the original meaning of the law, as written – one of the more comical non-scandals surrounding his confirmation hearing – has indeed followed him onto his first day on the job, as evidenced by a one-line question he asked from the bench:

“Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if we just followed the plain text of the statute?”

According to a report at ABC News, the newest justice spent a great deal of time questioning the federal worker’s lawyer about the wording of a statute related to the case, before grilling the Justice Department’s attorney about the meaning of the Civil Service Reform Act.

The case in question was Perry v. Merit Systems Protection Board, which revolves around the proper jurisdiction of a federal census worker’s employment dispute. Perry was the first of three that the once-again fully fledged bench was set to hear on the first day of its last session of the current term.

Despite the long, impressive resume that the Colorado native brings to Justice Scalia’s former seat, only time will tell what kind of jurist Trump’s first pick will turn out to be, and what kind of mark he will leave on the body of constitutional law.

But first impressions do matter, and one like this has been on many people’s wish list for a long time. (For more from the author of “Boom: Neil Gorsuch Just Made Originalists Happy with One Simple Question” please click HERE)

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