Later this month, the Senate Judiciary Committee convenes hearings on the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Although the Committee will have a lot of legitimate issues to consider, some outsiders are trying to interest it in two unusual topics: natural law, and the writings of a professor named John Finnis. These topics are distractions. The committee’s main business is to see whether Judge Gorsuch is qualified to apply the law impartially as a judge. And if the committee does decide to explore natural law or Finnis’s writings, those sources will point the committee back to its main business.
Finnis is now a professor emeritus at Oxford and a professor at Notre Dame Law School. After clerking at the Supreme Court, Gorsuch earned a Ph.D. at Oxford, and Finnis supervised Gorsuch’s dissertation there. In the last few weeks, some court-watchers have suggested that Finnis’s political views provide clues about how Gorsuch will behave as a justice. George Will hopes that Gorsuch’s studies under Finnis will help him “correct” some of Scalia’s views on the Constitution. (Scalia denied that the Constitution explicitly recognizes natural law or protects natural rights.) Several bloggers and news articles have noted that Finnis opposes abortion and non-conjugal and/or contracepted sex. Some hope, and more are alarmed, that Finnis’s views on those subjects may have rubbed off on Gorsuch.
