Bernie Sanders is Right to Oppose Gorsuch
Today US Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) announced his intent to support efforts to filibuster Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination:
Sanders has made the right call. Here’s why.
The Supreme Court has recently issued a slew of interesting and important decisions, and I want to make a point to talk about them, their consequences, and the merits of the arguments and judicial philosophies to which the various justices appealed.
One of the popular arguments for democracy as opposed to expert-driven, sophiarchist government is the notion that democracy is good for the same reasons that juries are good as opposed to judges. David Estlund makes just such an argument in Democratic Authority on the basis that all reasonable people can accept the jury model but not a system of judges due to uncertainty regarding the knowledge of the judges and that, by extension, all reasonable people can accept democracy but not government by experts. Today I aim to challenge this line of argument with a more critical examination of judges and juries and how we use them.
