This morning I talked with Armstrong and Getty about the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. If you missed it, you can listen here.
Here is the Gorsuch opinion about "Chevron deference." Good part is toward the back.
I mentioned that Judge Gorsuch has a degree in philosophy from Oxford, where he studied under John Finnis. You can learn more about Finnis and his views of natural law here. I have my differences with Finnis, particularly the notion of "basic goods," and you can get a hint of that disagreement in this review of a book by Hadley Arkes (who's also in the Finnis camp).
My article on the political philosophy of Star Trek was mentioned, and it's here.
Update: Let me add: why is it important that Judge Gorsuch is a good writer? Naive as it might seem in today's political world, our legal and political institutions rest ultimately on deliberation, argument, and persuasion. That is just as true of a Supreme Court decision as of anything else. More true, in fact, because the Supreme Court acts through its orders and opinions. A persuasive Supreme Court opinion is critical to the long-term success of any ideological or political mission. If justices fail to write persuasively and clearly, their work will lose support and ultimately be forgotten. That is why the great writers on the Court, like John Marshall, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Robert Jackson, and Antonin Scalia have had influence sometimes out of proportion to the actual merits of their arguments. (Other justices, including my favorite, Stephen Field, have not always been up to that mark, and their influence has sometimes been muffled as a consequence. Field could write well at times, but he was no Holmes. Consequently, the fact that he was a thousand times the legal thinker Holmes was, the latter gets far more renown today.) Justice Scalia was at times sloppy and over-the-top in his opinions. I'm hopeful his successor will be more on target.
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