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That's the fascinating scenario and story that could make for a great TV show. It's also the first paragraph of Judge Neil Gorsuch's dissent in the case, which  law professor Jed Handelsman Shugerman 

 constitutes one of the most callously written opinions he's ever read.

The trucker was fired but was ordered reinstated by an administrative review board, a judgement upheld by Gorsuch's colleagues on the Court of Appeals over his objection.

"It might be fair to ask whether TransAm’s decision was a wise or kind one," Gorsuch wrote. "But it’s not our job to answer questions like that. Our only task is to decide whether the decision was an illegal one."

Given that the trucker was freezing, does that view of the law lack a certain humanity in deference to the literal nature of law? That was at the heart of Sen. Al Franken's questioning of Gorsuch today.

"Gorsuch was demonstrating his firm belief in the principle that the actual words of a law should be strictly applied by the court," 

. "This doctrine, often referred to as textualism, stands for the proposition that it is up to the legislature to make the law and is up to judges to strictly apply the actual words of the law."

In his dissent, Gorsuch dismissed his judicial colleagues' concerns about health and safety.

"Which judges write like this?" Professor Shugarman  asked in his essay today.  "Those who aspire to be the next Scalia."

"His lack of self-awareness of his theory’s flaw plus his acerbic dismissiveness of real-world conflicts are not a good sign that he has the appropriate judicial temperament for the Supreme Court," he concluded.

NewsCut

Bob Collins

Author

A law professor says he has rarely read a dissenting opinion as callous as the one Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch wrote. That's why Sen. Al Franken pursued it at Gorsuch's nomination hearing on Tuesday.

A look at the ‘frozen trucker’ case

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