Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s new book, which reflects his belief that the United States is over-regulated, will be published this summer.
The work, “Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law,” is scheduled to be published on Aug. 6 by Harper Collins. Justice Gorsuch is also the author of “A Republic, If You Can Keep It” (2019) and “The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia” (2009).
Co-written with Janie Nitze, one of his former clerks, the new book will look at the stories of fishermen in Florida, families in Montana, monks in Louisiana, an internet entrepreneur in Massachusetts “and many others who have found themselves trapped unexpectedly in a legal maze,” according to the publisher’s description.
“America has always been a nation of laws. But today our laws have grown so vast and reach so deeply into our lives that it’s worth asking: In our reverence for law, have we gone too far?”
“Over just the last few decades, laws in this nation have exploded in number; they are increasingly complex; and the punishments they carry are increasingly severe. Some of these laws come from our elected representatives, but many now come from agency officials largely insulated from democratic accountability?” the summary states.
“Some law is essential to our lives and our freedoms. But too much law can place those very same freedoms at risk and even undermine respect for law itself. And often those who feel the cost most acutely are those without wealth, power, and status.”
Justice Gorsuch, who joined the nation’s highest court in 2017 after being nominated by President Donald Trump, has voted for gun rights, to repeal Roe v. Wade, and to curb environmental regulations. He also voted against COVID-19 emergency restrictions, which he called “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”
When he was an appeals court judge, the justice called the Chevron doctrine, a “behemoth” that “permit[s] executive bureaucracies to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power and concentrate federal power in a way that seems more than a little difficult to square with the Constitution of the framers’ design.”
So-called Chevron deference, which the Supreme Court enunciated in 1984, holds that an agency’s interpretation of a statute it administers is entitled to deference unless Congress has said otherwise. Critics say it is a bureaucracy-empowering judicial doctrine that has contributed to the explosive growth of the U.S. government in recent decades.
The court’s ultimate ruling might alter the current balance of power among Congress, executive agencies, and the nation’s judiciary by undermining the legal underpinnings of the modern administrative state, which critics deride as an illegitimate fourth branch of government.
Justice Gorsuch also embraces textualism, a school of legal construction that was championed by the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, whom he replaced on the Supreme Court. Textualism holds that legal text should be interpreted based on its plain meaning, as opposed to other considerations such as what lawmakers intended when they drafted and approved a statute.
The landmark ruling brought an expanded meaning to the phrase “on the basis of sex” that appears in the nondiscrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Critics say the idea of gender identity, while controversial today, was unknown at the time the statute was enacted.
Other Supreme Court justices and former justices have recently published books or have books on the way.
Justice Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson’s memoir, “Lovely One,” will be published by Penguin Random House on Sept. 3. The Justice has said that the book’s title is the English translation of part of her name, Ketanji Onyika.
According to the publisher’s description, the author “invites readers into her life and world, tracing her family’s ascent from segregation to her confirmation on America’s highest court within the span of one generation.”
Former Justice Anthony Kennedy’s two-volume memoir, recounting his early life in California and 30 years of service on the court, is set to be published in the fall.
Publisher Simon and Schuster said that “Life and Law: The Early Years” and “Life and Law: The Court Years” will be published on Oct. 1. The memoir will be available as a boxed set and as individual editions, each weighing in at about 320 pages.
Simon and Schuster published former Justice Stephen Breyer’s memoir, “Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism,” on March 26.
In it, the retired justice criticizes the increasingly conservative lean of the court that accelerated during the Trump administration.
