Justice Gorsuch: Americans ‘have a lot of work to do on civility’

Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said Thursday that federal laws and regulations have exploded in the country in part due to distrust among Americans, arguing the country needs to work on civility.

“We have to be able to talk to one another and we have to be able to lose, as well as win,” Justice Gorsuch said during an event Thursday evening at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Ventura County, California.

“We have a lot of work to do on civility and civics,” he said.

The justice visited the graves of the late President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy Reagan to pay respects earlier in the afternoon while on site ahead of his evening event where he touted his new book, “Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law.”

The book, published by Harper under HarperCollins, became available August 6.

Justice Gorsuch, who was appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump in 2017, wrote the book with a former law clerk, Janie Nitze, detailing how too much law has crushed ordinary Americans.

They point to several stories — like that of a fisherman, a woman who braids hair, a group of monks who sold caskets, and a Missouri musician — who all faced federal agents trying to target their business using obscure regulations.

Justice Gorsuch told the audience that “nobody knows” how many federal crimes there are, though the federal code definitely has doubled in length since 1982.

“Our prisons have exploded. There are more people serving life sentences today in this country than were serving any sentence in 1970,” Justice Gorsuch said.

“The law in this country has exploded just in my lifetime.”