Justice Gorsuch's call on the people to keep the republic

Speaking in the office once occupied by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Neil Gorsuch had some choice words about Dred Scott, the antebellum Supreme Court decision that precluded black Americans from citizenship.

“It’s the first opinion of this court that really radically departed from the original meaning of the Constitution,” Gorsuch said. “And I don’t doubt the justices were well-intentioned. They thought that by creating the right to own slaves in the territories of the United States, that that would help avert a civil war. That’s what they thought they were doing. But judges make rotten politicians and they wound up contributing to the Civil War instead of averting it.”