U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch warned Sunday on Fox News about how an “explosion” of new laws could impact Americans’ freedoms.
Gorsuch sat down for interview with Fox News’ Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday” to discuss his upcoming book, “Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law,” which is set to be released on Tuesday. During the discussion, Bream brought up the idea of conduct not only being “over regulated” but also “over criminalized,” leading to Gorsuch agreeing that Americans could be committing felonies every day without realizing it.
“I think that might be true. Some professors say that there are now so many federal laws on the books, crimes, that every American over the age of 18 commits one felony a day. And that’s happened in my lifetime — 1970 to present we’ve seen maybe a doubling in the number of federal crimes on the books. That just counts what’s in the code, the U.S. code passed by Congress. That’s just the tip of the iceberg because federal agencies have been busy too,” Gorsuch said.
“On the one hand we need laws to keep us free and safe. On the other hand, if you have too many laws, you impair those same freedoms and our aspirations for equality, too, because who can deal with a world with so much law? James Madison said it’s going to be the people with money and connections,” Gorsuch continued. “As a judge, now for 18 years, I just came to see case after case in which ordinary Americans — just trying to live their lives, not hurt anybody, raise their families — who are just getting whacked by laws unexpectedly.”
Bream continued to press Gorsuch on his thoughts regarding regulations, noting how some have called the power a “fourth branch of government,” before reading out a line from the justices’ book which called out federal agencies acting as “prosecutor and judge, too.” (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: DOJ Data Confirms Conservative Fears Biden Weaponized Justice System)
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“The IRS has a hot line if [you’ve] got questions — I mean, you don’t want to become a federal felon, you call them. It turns out for a period of time they were giving wrong answers about a third of the time. Then when asked, ‘How come so many wrong answers?,’ they said, ‘Well, the IRS code has just gotten so complex and there are so many new laws.’ There’s been an explosion in our laws and it’s new and it’s different and it’s in our lifetime,” Gorsuch said.
The Supreme Court Justice went on to discuss how “trust” among Americans is essential for democracy to survive, but adding that if the trust is lost then the people end up turning to the state and laws. Bream then asked how an independent judiciary, such as the Supreme Court, operates within “conflicts between branches.”
“The answer is the Constitution and if it’s in the Constitution and the other two branches are infringing on it — the right to exercise your religion, the right to bear arms, your right to speak freely — I am a duty bound, I took an oath to uphold the Constitution and you win even though the government may not like it,” Gorsuch said. “When do I stay out? When the Constitution doesn’t say anything about the subject. That’s left for ‘we the people’ to decide in their democratic process’ and that’s most things in our daily lives, isn’t it?”
Gorsuch later added how “profound” the Declaration of Independence is for Americans, in which it details individual’s “inalienable rights” that “do not come from the government.”
The justice concluded by stating the solution to the issues brought up by his book can be solved by learning “how to trust one another.”
“Not everything needs to be solved by a distant government. Sometimes we should remember what Tocqueville talked about, working with one another. That means listening as well as speaking. That means learning how to lose as well as win,” Gorsuch said. “That’s trusting the person with whom you disagree, loves this country every bit as much as you do. My good friend Steve Breyer says ‘if I listen to almost anyone talk for long enough I’m going to find something they say that we can agree on. Maybe we should start there.”
President Joe Biden released on July 29 his support for a sweeping overhaul of the Supreme Court, which includes suggested term limits for the justices and a “binding code of conduct.”
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