As confirmation hearings begin in Washington D-C for Neil Gorsuch, Senator Amy Klobuchar said Monday she wants to know more about why President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee said judges should strive “to apply the law it is, focusing backward, not forward”. Klobuchar says, “We are no longer dealing with plows, bonnets and colony debts in England, but instead driverless cars, drones and cybercrimes.” Gorsuch in his opening remarks said it is for the people’s representatives to make new laws and for “neutral and independent judges to apply the law in the people’s disputes.”
Klobuchar says she also has questions about Gorsuch’s position in the Hobby Lobby case, about a business not covering contraceptives in employee insurance plans. She says in that opinion, Gorsuch “found that corporations were legal persons and could exercise their own religious beliefs. This ruling leaves open the troubling argument that corporations have a right to free speech equal to that of citizens.” Klobuchar says Gorsuch has been “rightfully praised” for impressive academic credentials and experience, but she wants to know how his decisions would “reflect a respect for precedent and the law and how they would affect all Americans.”
Here are Klobuchar’s complete remarks: