This is a Kato's special podcast. I'm Caleb Brown. Federal appellate Judge Neil Gorsuch is President Trump's pick to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

So what do his opinions indicate about his approach to the job?

Cato's Ilia Shapiro comments.

If Democrats are really concerned about Trump as president engaging in a wide variety of executive overreach, one might think that you want someone on the Supreme Court who seems less deferential to that kind of thing and this guy seems like he has a

record that speaks to that. Well that is the 64 billion dollar question. What

happens when Trump realizes that all these wonderful judges that he's been advised to

appoint and select from by the Federal Society and the Heritage Foundation and others, and

I approve of his list as well for that matter.

What happens when he realizes that those are the same types of judges that disagree with him on

the scope of eminent domain and the takings clause or executive power or the second amendment or libel laws and all of these

things that he controversially campaigned on.

We'll just have to see.

As far as the Democrats are concerned, well, look, this is just so much Kabuki Theater. We had those

protest placards with the fill in the blank, stop, you know, hashtag stop and

then you could fill in whoever the nominee would end up being.

So I don't know whether the Democrats are really just going through the motions,

that this is a dry run for the next vacancy when the balance of the court could actually shift.

So Scalia had once described himself as or said he should be a pin up for the defense bar.

What do we know about Neil Gorsuch

with respect to criminal defense?

Judge Gorsuch is very much like Scalia

on many things, and certainly criminal procedure is one of those.

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