For him to defer to the executive agency in
that case would be ``more than a little difficult to square with the
Constitution of the framers' design.'' That is because doing so would
allow agency bureaucracy to ``swallow huge amounts of core judicial and
legislative power,'' which the Constitution assigns to separate
branches of government. So the nominee was concerned about the
separation of powers. He was concerned about people whose liberties
might be impaired, and because of those concerns, he said no to the
immigration agency's policy whim of the day. Judge Michael McConnell, a former colleague of Judge Gorsuch on the
Tenth Circuit, makes the same observation about this case. He says the
scope of executive power arguably ``will be the most common Supreme
Court issue of the coming decade.'' He says the nominee analyzes that
issue in a way that is faithful to the Constitution and to the
independence of the judiciary, and he points to the nominee's thinking
on this question.
Keywords matched
immigration