Alexander M. Bickel, the great constitutional law scholar and proponent of judicial restraint, noted at the time of the Watergate denouement that it would be difficult to keep a president from "kicking over the traces."  That phrase came to mind on reading the April 21 editorial in the New York Times, "Neil Gorsuch, and the State's Power to Kill."  Commenting on the Supreme Court's denial of a stay of execution for Ledell Lee, convicted in 1995 in Arkansas for murder, the article asserted that Justice Gorsuch "was sitting in a seat that by all rights should be occupied not but him but by President Barack Obama's doomed nominee, Merrick Garland." Apparently, for the Times, any person nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States by the former president is, by right, entitled to sit on the high court.  And to heck with the Constitution's appointments clause, which provides, in Article II,...(Read Full Post)