Tag Archives: “Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law”

Opinion – Justice Gorsuch’s book of fish tales

Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch worries about big government. About agencies that overreach and infringe the rights of unwary and unsophisticated individuals. About using the overwhelming force of criminal law to bludgeon relatively minor wrongdoers. About the federal government supplanting the power of state and local governments that are closer to the needs of their citizens. If “Over Ruled” has a hero and heroine, they are John and Sandra Yates, a Florida couple whose story is threaded through its pages. Chapter 1 opens with the harrowing tale of Sandra Yates doing laundry one morning in 2010 when “seven agents in bulletproof vests, hands primed on holstered guns,” approached her Anna Maria Island bungalow. more, >>CLICK TO READ<< 08:54

Americans are ‘getting whacked’ by too many laws and regulations, Justice Gorsuch says in a new book

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said ordinary Americans are “getting whacked” by too many laws and regulations in a new book that underscores his skepticism of federal agencies and the power they wield. “Too little law and we’re not safe, and our liberties aren’t protected,” Gorsuch told The Associated Press in an interview in his Supreme Court office. “But too much law and you actually impair those same things.” The problem, he said, is that there has been an explosion of laws and regulations, at both the federal and state levels. The sheer volume of Congress’ output for the past decade is overwhelming, he said, averaging 344 pieces of legislation totaling two million to three million words a year. One vignette involves John Yates, a Florida fisherman who was convicted of getting rid of some undersized grouper under a federal law originally aimed at the accounting industry and the destruction of evidence in the Enron scandal. Yates’ case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where he won by a single vote. “I wanted to tell the story of people whose lives were affected,” Gorsuch said. more, >>CLICK TO READ<< 15:01