Neil Gorsuch on the Declaration of Independence, Originalism, and Separation of Powers

In a special America 250 issue, Reason takes a look back at our country's founding people and ideas. Read more here .

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch has a new children's book, Heroes of 1776: The Story of the Declaration of Independence , co-authored with attorney Janie Nitze. It tells the story of the people behind the Declaration, and the risks and courage it took to bring that document into being.

In May,  Reason 's Nick Gillespie joined Gorsuch at the U.S. Supreme Court to discuss the book as the country approached its 250th anniversary. Gorsuch argues that the core ideas of America's Founding—equality, inalienable rights, and self-government—still demand courage to defend.

Their conversation moves from the Founding to the present, touching on what it means to call the United States a " creedal nation " built on shared ideas rather than ethnicity or religion. They discuss originalism, equal justice under law, the expanding scope of federal and state regulation, and what all of that means for the future of the American project.

Reason : What is the main lesson America should be thinking about as we approach our 250th birthday?

Gorsuch: We're going to have a lot of fireworks, and there are going to be some good barbecues and parades, but I hope we take a moment, too, to reflect on the gift we've been given and the challenge we face. What I mean by that is, the Declaration of Independence had three great ideas in it: that all of us are equal; that each of us has inalienable rights given to us by God, not government; and that we have the right to rule ourselves.

Our nation is not founded on a religion. It's not based on a common culture even, or heritage. It's based on those ideas. We're a creedal nation. I hope we take a moment to reflect on that and to recommit ourselves to that.

One more thing: the courage it takes to defend those ideas. They were not inevitable. The stories of the men, women, and children in the book, I hope, will inspire children to realize the courage it takes to carry those ideas forward in their own time.

The way American history is often taught, especially to kids, it can feel like "this happened, then this happened, and of course here we are." How do you focus on the idea that this wasn't inevitable?

There are a bunch of things in the book we point to. Those three ideas. We point out what Europe was like at the time. It was monarchies. The notion that all people are created equal? No, there are kings and serfs. The notion that you have rights from God, from your creator? No, everything came from government. And self-rule certainly was a very dangerous proposition in the world of the Declaration.

You're right. We take it as the air we breathe. Fish in the water don't even realize. But those things were dangerous, and they were traitors for declaring them. The British said that Americans had declared for themselves an inalienable right to talk nonsense. We walk through how the vote originally wasn't going to go through unanimously.

This is at the Continental Congress.

Yes, the Continental Congress. There was huge debate over it. You have to remember, only about 40 percent of colonists actually supported the patriot cause. Another 20 to 30 percent were Loyalists. A whole bunch of people were undecided. Much as [in] our own age. They were divided. People were divided. There was nothing inevitable about it. Absolutely nothing.

Let's talk a bit about originalism, the judicial philosophy you follow. The Declaration of Independence isn't law in the same way that some of the things that come before you in the Supreme Court are, so how do you stay true to its text and meaning without opening the door to people simply asserting, "It's in the Declaration. If I have the right number of guns or the right number of votes, I can just make that happen." How do you anchor an understanding of the American project in a text rooted in a particular time?

If you think of the Declaration as our mission statement and the Constitution as the how-to manual, well, the Constitution is all about dividing power. [James] Madison realized men are not angels and that their aspirations for power need to be checked and checked and checked again. So how do we set up our system of government? Three branches, and that's just at the federal level. That's horizontally, separated vertically too: States have powers, and the people have powers that are reserved to them as well.

What's my role in it? My role is as a judge. Judge is an important role, but a modest station at the end of the day. My role's not to make war. I'm not the commander in chief. My role is not to make the laws. They do that across the street in Congress. My job is to make sure that anybody who comes to court in a dispute has equal justice under law. That is to say, the rich and the poor, as our judicial oath says, come to us equally. You may be very unpopular, but if you have a good, winning legal argument, that's my job to vindicate…