former law clerk to supreme court justice samuel alito and also worked in the white house office for president george bush and breanne is the chief counsel for the constitutional accountability center and former log for supreme court justice stephen buyer. welcome to both of you. to you first, democrats are expressing some concerns, may be a lot of concerns about this nomination. how about you? there are a lot of reasons to be concerned. there are a number of troubling aspects to judge gorsuch s record of siding with corporate interest and corporations over individuals, trying to hold them accountable when they violate the law. attention for not respecting federal civil rights protections, once passed into law by congress and running in antipathy to the role of the court as a form for vindicating individual rights and protections guaranteed and the constitution. this nominee has a very heavy burden, the burden of showing he has mainstream views, he will put law over ideological prefe
justice we want to see on the supreme court. i think his qualifications are unchallenged you know what you can say he is not extremely well qualified to sit on the court given his view of the role of a judge. i just don t think it is fair to level substantive purges on him based on what you think his view of particular issues might be because the fact is we don t know. when he is an acknowledged fan of the writings of the late antonin scalia, the man he would replace. a conservative justice replacing a conservative justice, what is wrong with that? the key question is will he follow all of the constitution or just the parts of the constitution he particularly likes? it is also worth keeping in mind the promises that candidate trump made throughout the campaign which he was going to apply a litmus test to his nominee, that he would make sure that his nominee would vote to overrule roe vs. wade, have particular views on guns, religious liberty, that is very unusual and very troubling
confirmation. any one member can require it. many democrats already have. and it is the right thing to do. judge gorsuch is someone who has built a reputation, a proven record on the court of appeals for a decade of being a principled constitutionalist judge, of taking a humble approach to being a judge and simply following the law, following the constitution, upholding the bill of rights. part of the anger democrats have is they are still smarting from the fact that merrick garland, of course president obama s final supreme court nominee, never even got a hearing let alone a floor vote in the senate. republicans saying it was a much different situation because that was a lame duck president trying to get someone on the court in an election year which is extremely rare and that this is a much different case because you have a new president who just won an election and has the right to get his people on the court. jenna: thank you. jon: for more on this, let s bring in barbara s
president who appointed him. it s worth keeping in mind the context in which this nomination comes which is days past the announcement of the presidents of muslim ban, firing of the active attorney general for seeking to not defend that band, we have to make sure judge gorsuch is not share the frankly authoritarian views of the president who nominated him and respects the critical role of the court as an independent check on a legal action by the executive branch. jon: because words matter, it is worth pointing out it is not a muslim ban, it is a travel ban, and it is temporary. i just want to go to you, barbara, what is your view of judge gorsuch? i have to fundamentally disagree with that analysis of his record. i think judge gorsuch has fought long and hard and thought about what the rule is of an applet judge, he is a originalist, and that means he reads the text of the statute or constitutional provision that comes before him then neutrally applies the facts of the case to tha