Having voted to make Trump supreme within the executive branch, Justice Gorsuch tells us we can all relax about the potential for autocracy. After all, he promises to use the new judicial toys–the “major questions” doctrine and nondelegation–to keep the bureaucracy in line, and he claims to believe that Congress should be great again within its own sphere.
The next two years will almost certainly be marked by battles between Trump and Congress, particularly over issues such as impoundment. Should we take Gorsuch at his word? Will he really act as a check on Trump when these constitutional issues come before him, as they inevitably will, or will he expose himself as just another political hack in Trump’s pocket?
There is some reason for optimism on this point. We’ll see.