Conservative columnist Eric Fehrnstrom, in this opinion piece, defends Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch from his liberal critics by praising Gorsuch's strict adherence to the "rule-of-law" principle and ridiculing Senator Elizabeth Warren's contrary "empathy" principle on the basis of which she accused "Gorsuch of favoring the interests of big corporations over workers and consumers, as if what matters is the identity of the plaintiffs and defendants and not the legal reasoning behind Gorsuch's opinions.
In defense of Gorsuch's (now famous) opinion that a trucking company was legally justified in firing a truck driver for abandoning his rig to save his life, Fehrnstrom gushes:
"Gorsuch addressed the law's demands, and how what we might desire in terms of an outcome is not always possible. 'Sometimes,' he said, 'the answers we reach aren't the ones we personally prefer. Sometimes the answers follow us home at night and keep us up. But the answers we reach are always the ones we believe the law requires. And for all its imperfections, I believe that the rule of law in this nation truly is a wonder.'"
Ah yes ... a "wonder" indeed! No doubt Gorsuch's "wonder" is the same one that Anatole France so insightfully praised with these words:
"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread."
Praise be to "rule-of-law" judges such as Gorsuch who would dispassionately declare it legal for the employer to fire a person for saving his/her life regardless of whether the employer and employee were, respectively, a) a corporation set up to make wealthy people who don't have to work for a living rich from the labor of poor people who have to work for a living, and b) a poor person who had to work for a living, or VICE VERSA.
Yep! Even if vice versa. That's right. Even if the employer were a poor person who had to work for a living and the employee were a big corporation enriching its non-working owners (yeah, I know this "totally dispassionate rule-of-law" kind of thinking is so divorced from reality that it can be confusing even to pretend to believe in it), then--even then!--the "rule-of-law" Judge Gorsuch would have ruled in favor of the employer (the poor man), God bless him.
So, Fehrnstrom lectures us, there is nothing wrong or biased, and everything praiseworthy, in Gorsuch's "rule-of-law" principle.
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