Amy Klobuchar: “I come to the floor to join my colleagues in speaking on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to serve as an Associate…”

“I come to the floor to join my colleagues in speaking on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to serve as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court. As you know, Senators have a solemn obligation to advise and consent on a President's nominee for the Supreme Court, and I take that obligation very seriously. My goal during the hearing as a member of the committee was to understand the judge's view on the law, his judicial record, and his philosophy. We needed to know what kind of Justice he would be and what that would mean for Americans. Although many cases decided by the lower courts are less complicated, even though some of them are complicated, many of them are more straightforward than the ones that come before the Supreme Court. The cases that go before the Supreme Court are the hardest cases. They involve the most complicated legal gray areas. I have heard my colleagues many times talk about some of the unanimous decisions that the judge was involved in. I know that. But when I look at the kinds of cases that come before the Supreme Court, those are different kinds of cases. As I looked over the judge's record, I tried to focus on situations where he faced hard cases like those he might decide as a Supreme Court Justice. In my mind, the question was this: What would Judge Gorsuch do if he were appointed to the Supreme Court? What kind of philosophy would he have?…”