This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, February 2, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

What should libertarians take from the judicial opinions of Neil Gorsuch?

Kato Institute adjunct scholar Andrew Grossman says there is much in the judge's background

to recommend him to libertarians. We spoke yesterday.

If you really come down to the base of it, the thing about Neil Gorsuch is that he categorically rejects special treatment for the government in court and that's a very rare thing.

He holds the government to its proof, he makes them put forward evidence.

Let me give you an example.

In one instance the government wanted to enforce a campaign finance law that discriminated

against smaller parties, like the Libertarian Party, for example.

And the government had some contrived theory about why that made sense.

They had no evidence.

And he held them to that, which is something that a lot of courts don't do.

What else?

Judge Gorsuch consistently holds government officials accountable when they violate the Constitution.

He doesn't give them the kind of blank check that courts

often do when they claim what's called qualified immunity as a defense to constitutional

violations. So when New Mexico police arrested an 11-year-old playing gym class, they put him in handcuffs and marched him out of the school,

Judge Korsuch's view was that, well, they didn't have statutory authority to do that, and so they couldn't get off scot free. The rest of the panel

disagreed. So no authority to make the arrest I believe was what the

statute did not authorize the arrest in any way. That's exactly right.

And similarly when an off-duty cop turned on the lights on his car and sped around town recklessly

...